Report on INTEROP NYC 2009 Cloud Computing Conference (written 4 for Webgrrls International)
CONTENTS
- Intro
- What is cloud computing
- Conference Highlights
- Resources
The fragile economic recovery did little to deter a thousand techies from visiting the INTEROP 2009 NYC conference and tradeshow at the Javits Center in Manhattan, Nov. 16-20, 2009 and its symposium-within-a-conference on “Cloud Computing”. Despite the fact short term tech growth will come from broadband being built out or healthcare and education reform, everyone from newbies to grizzled veterans are girding themselves for the next really big wave (hold on…a switch of metaphor is coming), the ambiguous “cloud”.
“How painful can something called the ‘cloud’ be?” I asked myself that as I flew from Silicon Valley, where I was most recently an engineering program manager for a medical device start-up, to JFK to investigate this conference on behalf of Webgrrls International.
(Note: a Web 2.0 conference and expo was also collocated at Javits last week. It attracted a decidedly Gen X crowd of both sexes. Many were attired in black.)
What is “cloud computing”?
Much like “Web 2.0″, the term “cloud computing” was a collection of related concepts, a definition in search of a term. (See Resources Section). But it was when Erik Schmidt of “The Goog” used the term in 2006 to describe Google’s way of managing data and then Amazon included the word “cloud” when it launched EC2 shortly thereafter, that the term went mainstream and the hype began. Fast forward to late 2009, and Google, Microsoft and Amazon are making major investments in “cloud computing” – though the projection is that the profits won’t be there until 2015 – and voilà! The technology finally caught up to the metaphor!
What is cloud computing? Some execs answer that question with a very Zen “whatever you want it to be.” Here’s what we found out: Businesses must wring more efficiency out of their daily activities. Cloud computing is the umbrella term that refers to a major shift of raw computing power and applications out from a company’s own internal IT infrastructure to space in a mega data center operated by (so far) giants like Google, Microsoft or Amazon. And maybe someday out to a data center operated by what is now a start-up like Joyent. http://www.joyent.com
These data centers are scattered west of the Mississippi (cheap land) and in one other technical and linguistically compatible country, Ireland. And they include all the new HW and apps that these titans need to create or buy to operate them. As the Big Players start renting out computing capacity and application space to companies who had previously maintained 100% of their own apps at their home offices, this increases the requirements for literally bullet-proof infrastructure and is very disruptive to both existing corporate hierarchies and traditional ways of selling and choosing software and services. Some companies like Nokia and GlaxoSmithKlein are already storing hundreds of terabytes of data “in the cloud” but this is mostly non-critical data, like email. To date, due to competitive and security concerns, the Big Players have been secretive about their new server farms, thus discussions of cloud computing are tinged with excitement, mystery and ambivalence about the changes it will eventually bring. It has been reliably reported that Microsoft has its first European server farm in an industrial park in Dublin from where it runs the network for its own Bing search, Hotmail and MS Messenger services. Microsoft is adding 10k of new servers per month to its other server farms in Washington State and Texas.
Another challenge in this new world of “the cloud” can be appreciated if you’ve ever been involved in moving your company’s critical data from one vendor to another, as I was when I worked for a healthcare start-up that moved its network and data from EDS to NTT/Vero. You know what a slow, painstaking thus expensive process moving data from one service provider to another can be. In fact, once a company gets its critical data up in someone’s cloud, it may never be cost effective to move it again! In other words, decisions must be made carefully, as they will not be easy to reverse. As with any “game changing” shift, many security and legal issues remain to be ironed out.
Conference Highlights
General observations
While conferences today mean everyone is emailing, tweeting and posting photos in real time, why is it other aspects of conferences and shows never seem to change? There’s the dais with the expert panel, the PowerPoint presentations and the guy who runs around bringing the microphone to the next person who wants to ask a question. And the tradeshow booths always have seasoned, mostly male presenters throwing out T-shirts to the audience, aided by a few perky young gals. And last but not least, there are the small attractions that are borrowed from the county fair, like the photo opportunities that provide costume props so straight-laced engineers can step momentarily into a fun role, like a rock star. Let’s not forget the strong drinks (after 3pm) and the sweets kiosks and the endless technical documents and tschotskes. The Interop show did have a nice feature whereby engineers led tours of the show floor for other engineers. The best T-shirt I saw last week was for a Xirrus product named “splunk”. It said “Take the SH out of IT.” It was interesting to see the full NOC (network operating center) that ran the conference and show displayed behind glass walls so you could see the equipment and staff. And I must admit I was quite willing to tweet about IBM’s “Sweet Bar” in exchange for a small sack of candy. My only disappointment – as will be evident to you if you view the conference photos on Flickr (see Resources Section) is that – in stark contrast to the the Web 2.0 conference that was co-located with INTEROP NYC – women are almost nowhere to be found in decision making or key roles in this new, hardware intensive arena of cloud computing. A notable exception is Cisco VP Marie Hattar who delivered one of the keynotes entitled “So what is Borderless Networks and what does it really mean to IT professionals? “
People
The sole bit of star power on the program came when New York Times personal technology columnist David Pogue – himself a former musician and entertainer – took an entertaining turn on Wednesday. See his site at http://www.davidpogue.com. Since I came to the conference alone and don’t have any personal contacts in the infrastructure world, I was your average attendee. From following Interop on Twitter (and searches under keyword #interop) I gleaned that Microsoft had just lost a Big Kahuna named Don Dodge to Google – and this conference was Mr. Dodge’s first show appearance in public since his defection. So when Microsoft’s senior engineer for its Azure product (its cloud OS) , Mr. Yousef Khalidi was wrapping up a panel discussion on cloud computing and made the mistake of telling someone to “Google it”, the audience snickered. He quickly corrected himself and advised the audience to “Bing it” instead. Thus everyone could appreciate Microsoft’s uphill battle: the Google brand has long since entered our language as a verb synonymous with the search function. To those of us who worked for companies that Microsoft crushed in 80s and early 90s, it’s nice to know Microsoft is getting a taste of its own medicine.
Other pleasant or amusing aspects of the conference included off-site activties like bowling, where of course the bus driver to the venue apparently just arrived himself from parts unknown – and promptly got lost in Manhattan’s rush hour traffic – only to be rescued by accurate directions from some savvy Australian passengers on his bus!
I hope this short report has provided you with a better sense of some of the concepts, players and ambiance at Interop NYC 2009. If you’re an engineering student, you might want to check out opportunities to volunteer or intern with the conference organizers in the NOC, for example, as there will be Interop conferences across the country in 2010.
We’re all so tightly networked using gadgets that these conferences allow us all a rare chance to get out of our chairs, and practice meeting and greeting our fellow human beings, a skill that will never go out of fashion!
Additional resources:
1) Summary site by the INTEROP organizers
http://www.interop.com/newyork/
2) Interop on Twitter
http://twitter.com/interop_events
3) A set of conference and show pictures – nice photos but most do not contain names
4) History of the term “Cloud computing”
http://www.johnmwillis.com/cloud-computing/who-coined-the-phrase-cloud-computing/
5) Explanation of demand for “private clouds”
http://reddevnews.com/Articles/2009/11/20/Customers-Press-Vendors-for-Private-Clouds.aspx
6) Presentation on Load Balancing (also search Slideshare under “interop” and “cloud” for other presentations)
http://www.slideshare.net/dyninc/failover-and-global-server-load-balancing-for-better-network-availability © Jeremy Hitchcock
7) Eric Wolford, Riverbed Sr. VP discusses cloud computing and Riverbed’s recent announcement about their product direction for accelerating cloud environments.
(video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNxNJldm26Y
8) Conference report from Information Week
http://www.networkcomputing.com/virtualization/interop-cloud-computings-portability-gotcha.php?cid=ref-true © John Foley
9) (Video) Joel Conover, Cisco Marketing Manager welcomes you to learn more about Cisco Borderless Network at Interop New York, 2009. Hear customers talk about what Borderless Networks means (Cisco VP’s Marie Hattar’s keynote was on this topic)
