Elastic Security

Photo: Blyzz

Amazon EC2 is the first and most popular provider of infrastructure services via the web. Since a couple of months, they provide a Web-Console that allows to build and control a virtual infrastructure: launch instances from virtual images (called AMIs), reboot, and terminate instances, create persistent storage and attach it to instances, allocate public IP addresses, manage Security Groups and key pairs. All those tasks are very basic. It’s hard to imagine to manage more than 20 virtual machines on one account. It’s not possible to group virtual machines or to even give them human comprehensible names or to easily track which instance uses which storage. The recently added feature CloudWatch, which allows to collect status and performance metrics from running instances, is not (yet) accessible via the console. It seems extremely difficult to professionally run and manage an IT infrastructure on EC2 without additional tools (except small setups e.g. consisting of a web-application with some web-, application- and database servers). But how would the management of a virtual IT infrastructure look like? How will enterprise customers use an infrastructure service as provided by EC2?

Built In AWS Console

Despite all the issues cited above (low level operations, visual scalability issues, manual interventions on running instances for configuration), using the AWS Console has nevertheless also some advantages. It gives full control over all aspects of the virtual infrastructure and therefore allows to deploy any low-level modification if needed. Given the frequency with which Amazon added new features in the past two years (see here for a short overview of innovations for EC2), it is also possible that most of the obvious gaps will be closed by AWS in the near future.

Third Party Management Console

Enterprises may also rely on external management applications that cope with the missings in the AWS Console offerings. The advantage of using a third party provider is that there is competition to push those providers for excellence. We can also expect that there will be specialized products that respond more closely to the specific needs of specific customers and concentrate on usability, security, scalability, flexibility – whatever is important for a customer.

Third party management consoles can itself be based in the cloud (as SaaS) or installed in the private network of the enterprise either as server or desktop application. The best known example of a SaaS based solution is RightScale that started as a simple console for EC2 (already when EC2 didn’t provide one) and evolved into a solution that allows to manage the life cycle of deployments. SaaS based solutions raise questions on security (who has access to the enterprises data? how is illegal access prevented?) and offer less control than using the “raw” AWS solution.

Consoles that are installed in the private network of the enterprise customer give more options to secure the access to the enterprises data in the cloud, works nicely in hybrid setups and offer the possibility to integrate with already existing management tools. However, they still require a private enterprise network (even when it becomes much smaller), which means a more complex overall IT architecture and higher costs of administration and operation (including hardware and cloud servers).

“Inside” Management Console

A third approach (we don’t know of any provider yet) could be to run the management console within the EC2 infrastructure. The customer would use the AWS console to deploy a virtual image with the management console, start it up, and then manage all deployments via a secured web-service delivered by the management console server running in EC2. This solution somehow combines the advantages of the former two: all credentials remain in the virtual perimeter of the AWS account owner, while the enterprise IT manager can benefit from an easy-to-use and well adapted management solution that can be integrated with other tools the customer is already used to.

Outsourced Management

Of course, an enterprise may also decide to not care about the underlying infrastructure at all as long as it has secure and reliable access to its data. When flexibility, low-level control, and the need for integration with existing data or services aren’t fundamental, it may go for a SaaS or PaaS (e.g. Salesforce) solution. Even security software is available as a managed service today (known as MSSP). Otherwise, it could outsource the management to a service provider (we called it myPaaS-Provider) that not only runs the infrastructure, but also deploys software updates and performs customizations.  Such a model would allow the enterprise customer to get their own customized applications as SaaS without loosing the power to apply additional features or security mechanisms.

Conclusion

Instead of a conclusion we rather ask for your opinion. How will enterprises manage their infrastructure in the cloud?

Filed under: AWS, Discussions

 

(Foto: Leonard John Matthews)

Amazon EC2 – A New Platform

Amazon is one of the pioneers of providing infrastructure as a service (Iaas). Customers can instantiate virtual machines via the Web with complete control over all computing resources and pay only for the resources they consume: computer power, storage and network  bandwidth usage. Such an environment allows to scale up and down computing environments in minutes thus enabling new and potentially more efficient ways of running datacenters and IT services. Amazon created a whole new platform (comparable with Microsofts Windows Operating system) that generates a virtually illimited  number of opportunies for startups to provide new services, tools, and applications to build on top or to complete Amazon’s offerings.

This is the optimistic version. But let’s dig deeper – is it really a good idea for startups to build upon the EC2 platform? What are possible strategies to be successful? What are the risks to fail?

Platform Software

Becoming the owner of a popular platform, i.e. a foundation product that enables other software companies to build own offers upon, is the ultimate dream of every software company and its investors. Platform owners define the rules of the game and profit directly and indirectly from any economical activity on their platform since every new product based on the platform increases its attractiveness. IBM’s Mainfraim systems, DEC’s Minicomputer Operating Systems, Oracle Databases, Intel’s 386 Family, Microsoft’s Window OS, Java – all those are examples for successful  platforms that became de-facto standards. The Internet itself is such a huge platform that it has become the foundation of many other platforms like EC2, Google’s App Engine, Salesforce.com, but also Facebook or Twitter.

The downside of the ambition being a platform provider is the extremely tough competition. There’s typically only space for one or two platforms in a segment that defines the standard. The way to get there is challenging, expensive and extremely risky. Only a few can win.

Succeeding as Niche Provider

It is far easier and more predictable for small companies to position themselves as provider of complementary products for a given platform (like building Management Applications for Oracle Databases, Debugging Tools for Windows, Java Optimization Software, etc). Occupying and defending a niche has shown to be a successful strategy for startups many times. Some of those startups even expanded from their niche into horizontal markets and then became themself platform providers (e.g. Microsoft, Apple, Google). Others developed outstanding and unique skills that attracted the interest of the platform provider that eventually bought the startup and integrated their technology in their own plaform offererings. Being bought by Google is probably the most popular exit strategy of web-startups today. Google bought more than 50 companies between 2001 and 2008, Microsoft even more.

Is there any evidence that this strategy works also for EC2? Amazon acquired very few companies, almost all in the retailing market, one UI-specialist (Shelfari) and one stake in an alternative payment company (BillMeLater.com) . There is no company in the list that offers technology to improve, extend, or complete the EC2 platform. Does Amazon at least leave enough space in its eco-system for niche and complementary providers?

Looking at the history of EC2, it is quite impressing how the platform evolved within short time intervals. EC2 started as beta-version in 8/2006 without any graphical interface. Access to the platform was only possible via an API. There was no possibility to assign persistent storage to running instances, neither static IP addresses. In 12/2007, they presented DevPay (only for the US), a payment system that allows providers of virtual appliances (AMIs in Amazon’s terms) to assign fees to their VAs that Amazon charges from the users and credits to the provider. In 3/2008, they came out with features for high availability like static IP addresses and availability zones. In 8/2008, they provided the possibility to attach persistent storage to instances. In 10/2008, EC2 lost its beta-label and went into production mode. Two months later, EC2 become available in Europe.  Beginning 2009, Amazon announced a management console.  Shortly later, they started providing images based on Windows. In 3/2009, it became possible to reserve instances, i.e. keep fully configured images in hibernate mode without paying for them until they are used. And some weeks ago, they added monitoring, autoscaling, and loadbalancing to the platform’s features.

Given this impressive list of innovations, it is clear that Amazon puts a lot of pressure on startups to remain competitive against the platform provider. This brings us back to our initial question: is selling products or services on for the EC2-platform really a viable business model?

Strategies to Survive

We believe that this is the case. We even believe that the situation is not substantially different from any software provider which builds products for Windows. But any startup should be extremely careful concerning their decisions on the product/service scope and feature set. Here are a couple of strategies that may work:

• Startups could provide solutions for a technological niche that is not of common interest of the vast majority of EC2 users (e.g. network simulation)
• Startups could concentrate on specific usecases for a subset of potential EC2 users and provide simple solutions to streamline those usecases (e.g. deployment of web-services in Ruby on Rails)
• Startups could focus on a vertical industry segment (e.g. provide solutions for lawyers)
• Startups could diversify their offering by supporting different infrastructure providers (like GoGrid or FlexiScale)
• Startups could try to be faster than EC2, sell solutions for existing gaps in the Amazon offerings, and move on when EC2 fills the gap itself (RightScale seems to follow such a strategy)

Whatever strategy a startup chooses, an ermerging growth market as cloud-computing and infrastructure services should offer enough possibilities for determined founders to succeed and create a thriving business.

Filed under: AWS, Discussions