Venyu Blog

Well, it took nearly 200 posts before I could (finally) – thanks to Computerworld—borrow the title of Mick and the Boys’ classic song which is already so well-suited to the cloud computing community.

And speaking of Computerworld, reporter Esther Shein recently posted an in-depth article on how two well-known and respected organizations—SITA, the IT arm of the air transport industry and The New York Stock Exchange—are teaming with their respective cloud providers to offer industry-specific cloud computing services.

As Shein suggests at the outset of her piece, “While the cloud can be attractive for reasons including cost savings and agility, its value becomes even greater when providers can wrap vertical expertise and intellectual property around their offerings, observers say. Momentum is growing for the deployment of clouds specific to particular verticals because their resources are designed for communities that share special interests.”

In the case of SITA – the world’s leading specialist in air transport communications and information technology (IT) solutions, last spring in joined forces with communications provider Orange Business Services to build out a global, high-performance, managed cloud computing infrastructure to meet the needs of the air transportation industry.

According to Greg Ouillon, a SITA vice president quoted in the article, this industry-specific cloud solution actually eliminates a lot of IT redundancies.

“Each airline has its own network and probably 100 or 200 servers “doing pretty much the same things. Some of the functions that all airlines provide include call centers that process reservations, as well as check-in, boarding, security and scheduling aircraft turnaround. We felt it was a natural move to add a computing capability that would allow our customers to share even further with [common] IT infrastructure and save costs and gain benefits in service levels.”

SITA’s cloud computing infrastructure will be based on six “seamlessly” connected Tier III+ and Tier IV data centers in Atlanta, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney. Each data center will cover its own region, and the six will be connected via Orange’s high-speed MPLS network.

The global infrastructure will enable Orange and SITA to offer their individual portfolios of cloud computing services: infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, desktop as a service and software as a service. Both Orange and SITA will continue to own the service relationships with their end customers.

Network connections between the data centers are secured with “premium levels of protection against malicious threats,” according to SITA. The SITA/Orange cloud will provide highly resilient service through redundant connections, failover sites and network-based intelligent re-routing that can transfer traffic around any disruptions, SITA officials say. A key goal is consistent performance among all the data centers — the two companies are aiming to achieve no more than 100 milliseconds of latency when their customers operate their applications in the cloud.

All of the more than 30 airlines SITA has spoken to are interested in this cloud model, not just for cost savings, Ouillon says, but for business flexibility and agility. “Imagine all of a sudden you can have your employees work from home or Starbucks, so if you get an ash cloud over Europe or a bird flu, you can very quickly configure desktops and servers in the cloud and continue to access your app from an iPad.”

Ouillon says that SITA is actively engaged with several airlines at the contract or RFI/RFP level, especially out of Asia and the Middle East.

CAPEX as well as OPEX also figure into SITA’s calculus.

“All of a sudden, imagine you run your servers in an infrastructure that is shared, and you only pay for your use of it, so you don’t have to spend capital dollars for new equipment,” because, as with any type of cloud, “it’s shared, it’s optimized.” Airlines will be able to resell or recycle their existing servers, he says.

An expert interviewed for the article, Charlie Burns, vice president at research firm Saugatuck Technology suggests these in-line shared cloud initiatives will, over time, become more the choice de jour of many industries. “There are a host of solutions and platforms and hubs that are emerging at this industry-specific level. You’re going to see a variety of traditional Fortune 1000 companies leverage cloud infrastructure to develop market-specific, cloud-enabled services that are unique to a targeted market.” Such companies will become both users and providers of industry-specific clouds, he suggests.

No doubt there are economies of scale to be earned through industry-dedicated clouds. Still, I see possible shortcomings — either perceived or real. Although the connections (e.g. tunnel) between businesses and the cloud are purported to be secure and resilient, human error being what it is could unintentionally result in one company’s confidential information – everything from passenger specific data to airline-specific pricing policies—being shared with a competitor. You could, of course, make a similar argument when it comes to multi-tenancy clouds, although the likelihood of data mixing is low given the disparate nature of companies residing in these clouds.

Perhaps more significantly, to the “hacktavist” community these quasi crowdsourcing clouds are the equivalent of waving the proverbial red flag in front of a charging bull. The ability to simultaneously take down multiple companies in the same industry will undoubtedly appeal to those lesser qualities of unrepentant bravado universally found in the strike ‘em and swipe ‘em set.

Finally, just because the cloud is dedicated to a single industry doesn’t mean it will be any cheaper. In fact, these “uni-cloud” vendors might very well (and who can blame them) showcase the value of binding like-minded companies in the cloud and charge accordingly – at a premium, of course. In fact, as IT as a resource continues to get crimped, how will you, as an IT administrator, justify or explain away to your manger or CTO what is effectively a designer label for your cloud computing needs?

Although an inevitable outcome of what is rapidly becoming a cloud computing hydra, caution continues to remain the watchword and trust the benchmark by which a relationship with any cloud vendor is fully vetted, validated, and made to prosper.