From MVM to Multi-Tenant JVM

Last month, at the JVM Language Summit, Ryan Sciampacone from IBM shared his experience with extending IBM J9 JVM to host multiple applications.  You can view his talk on Oracle Media Network. You can also download a copy of his presentation here. Ryan goes into fairly good details about the challenges and lessons learned, so I recommend taking a look at it.
Across the world in Ireland, Waratek recently announced availability of Waratek Cloud VM for Java.   This JVM extends OpenJDK (HotSpot VM) with a virtualization layer that isolates applications in Java Virtual Containers.  In addition to application isolation, Waratek’s solution offers a container management interface based on Virsh, and resource monitoring… I think this is a very cool solution that could potentially shape ideas to JVM multi-tenancy implementation.  You can watch a presentation on their solution here, and find more information on their solution here. 
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Background: The current model of one JVM per application is inefficient.  It leads to JVM sprawls and inefficient usage of infrastructure resources.
The JVM specification defines the JVM as an abstract computing machine. It describes the Class file format,  machine instruction set, rules/constraints on class loading, etc., but contains no requirements or models for the implementation of the JVM’s internal processes, task management or resource management for secure sharing of the JVM by multiple applications. 
Over the last decade, before multi-tenancy had become such a popular (and overused) term, there have been a number of related efforts to address the issues:

• JSR 121: Application Isolation API  – Proposes a language construct called “Isolate” as the means to instantiate isolated Java applications on the JVM.  The spec also addresses isolate-to-isolate communication. 
• JSR 284: Resource Consumption Management (RCM) API – Since there will be different applications sharing a JVM, there needs to be a way to make sure a rogue app does not impact the performance of another app.   JSR 284 proposes a standard API to bind RCM policies to applications running on the JVM.  This JSR is quite interesting, as it has provisions for resource reservation as well setting constraints / quota for resource consumption.

Sun had a couple of reference implementations (MVM, MVM2).  For a complete list of related papers, visit Project Barcelona.) 
SAP also did its own implementation of application isolation scheme by implementing a pool of VMs and a dispatcher to schedule work in the VMs (see Process Attachable Virtual Machines,  Virtual Machine Container).
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Java multi-tenancy
There are two usecases for JVM multi-tenancy:

N.B. In the diagram above, I specify App, but App Server should be implied as well.
In option B, you have multiple applications using the JVM.  This is pretty straight forward.  In option A, you have a situation where multiple customers or business units (i.e. shared services) need to share the application securely.
In the case of option A, let’s assume an application has been implemented as a multi-tenant solution using JEE framework.  The App Server interfaces with the underlying JVM to provision new tenants (new isolates).  As part of the tenant provisioning, the App Server uses the RCM interface to set tenant policies.  The JVM monitors the RCM policies, and takes appropriate action.  As application requests hit the App Server, the App Server uses some tenant context scheme to determine which isolate it should go to….As the request flows through the different tiers of the JEE solution, the App Server makes sure only the tenant only accesses the JEE resources that it is authorized to use.  In case of an isolate loop or application runtime environment crash, the JVM applies RCM policies to handle the situation…
In the example above, we can see that there are requirements for the JEE framework as well as JVM runtime to support multi-tenancy.  And, we also should not forget that there re other languages running on the JVM.  Additional requirements may need to be considered.
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So, where are we now?
The JCP will standardize multi-tenancy in the Java Platform, but this will probably not happen in JDK8 given the current schedule and the focus for JDK8 (productivity, modularity, performance).
There should be more information available by Jan 2013. 
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Final thoughts
With JDK8, there will be a new Java module system (Jigsaw) replacing the old JAR format and class loading from Classpath…  The new format will contain metadata about the packages, classes, and dependencies using a new set of annotations (i.e. version, imports, exports, …), and reflection APIs to improve class loading and sharing, performance,… For some background, have a look at JSR 294 and JSR 277.   This will play an important supporting role in implementing multi-tenancy support in the JVM efficiently.
Clearly, JVM multi-programming / multi-tenancy capabilities will bring economic benefits to both enterprise customers and vendors. It think it might also trigger a new wave of JVM innovations like Waratek.

A review and analysis of IBM Test & Development Cloud, and opportunities

IBM finally GA'd its Development & Test Cloud last week: http://www.ibm.com/cloud/enterprise
In addition to a public cloud service offering, IBM is also providing an option to deploy such an infrastructure-as-a-service model on-premise (private cloud): http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offering/midware/a1030965

I believe Cloud Computing is critical to IBM’s future growth.  It may even be the only solution to declining revenues in some of IBM’s business segments.    I will share some opinions below after a quick solution review.

The IBM cloud is built on Rational & Tivoli components.  Rational provides design, development, testing, and application lifecycle management & governance, and Tivoli enables automated resource provisioning & service management (self-service request management, performance monitoring, usage metering, billing):

IBM Test & Development Cloud

I think there is an opportunity for IBM’s Cloud to be a huge success for the following reasons:

Virtualization
For IBM public cloud, KVM powers the virtualization layer.  The on-premise solution is virtualization technology agnostic: KVM, PowerVM, and VMWare.

• In a previous post, I made the observation that most large enterprises cannot standardize on a single virtualization infrastructure.  They have to deal with multiple virtualization technologies.   While there seems to be some gaps in IBM’s on-premise solution (ex. no Xen or Hyper-V support), I think IBM is in a much better position than VMWare or Oracle to unify management across different virtualization technologies.   This would be a a big competitive differentiator and value to the enterprise.
• Secondly, in the world of Cloud Computing, vendors are primarily focused on x-86 platform.  All other platforms are ignored.  If IBM can extend their public cloud to support pSeries and maybe even zSeries (mainframe-as-a-service ?), this would also be a huge competitive differentiator.  This would allow more workloads to be moved to the Cloud and benefit customers.  As an example, customers would be able to move some of their mainframe batch jobs to the Cloud to save MIPS.

OS Coverage
The initial set of OS images are limited. In the initial public offering, IBM only offers Red Hat & Novell images.  There are no Windows images (yet ?).  I think it is just a matter of time for IBM to offer Windows images on their public cloud.

As I said above, the on-premise solution can support AIX images now, and maybe zOS in the near future (why not?).  If IBM were to offer AIX & zOS VMs in the Cloud, it would not only be able to realize a new revenue stream and possibly revive that segment, but keep customers from migrating to other platforms.  I think this could open new opportunities.  The challenge is how to do this in a balanced way without cannibalizing the existing customer base, and creating incentives for IBM sales teams to execute after those opportunities.

Pricing
IBM’s cloud “infrastructure pricing” is competitive to AWS.  However, for IBM software, there are different licensing & subscription options:

Customer scenarios	Software	Infrastructure
	Charge	Charge
You "bring your own IBM license" ("BYOL")	Prepaid for software license	Per VM per hour
You own an IBM software license and can use the pre-built IBM images in the portal catalog
You "pay-as-you-go" ("PAYG")	Per Image per hour	Per VM per hour
You choose the desired software, accept the license terms online, and receive a monthly usage bill
You "bring your own software and licenses"	Prepaid for software licenses	Per VM per hour
You bring your own software or software for which you hold valid licenses and install them on the servers you provision
You want to test "pre-release" software	No charge for restricted use	Per VM per hr
From time to time, pre-released software images will be made available on a temporary basis for test (non-productive) use
You are an eligible ISV/SI developer	No charge or by usage	Per VM per hr
You can use selected IBM "development use only" ("DUO") software for development, test, proof of concept and sales demos on the IBM Cloud
Options available vary by software package.

IBM hasn’t published detailed pricing on their software subscription pricing (PAYG), but it would be a fair to assume it will be less than what they charge on Amazon.  [N.B. on AWS, IBM only offers a very small subset of its software primarily targeting ISVs for development & testing as opposed to enterprise customers.]
Now, let’s talk about the market and the opportunity for IBM.

Market maturity, opportunity & customer addressability
Since the recession a couple of years ago, Cloud Computing has gained more momentum in the enterprise.  IDC estimates spending on Cloud services in the range of $42B by 2012. 
If you look at early Cloud providers such as Amazon or Google, while I have enormous respect and appreciation for the innovation and technical design and delivery of the services, I argue they haven’t been able to gain traction in the enterprise space.  The only exception is SalesForce.com [take a look towards the bottom of this post.].  They have done well, because the founder had an enterprise software background.

As an example, if you look at Google’s enterprise business in 2009, it booked around $209M (that includes revenue from their search appliance + Google Apps).  In a previous post, I estimated AWS revenue to be around $200M / year.    If you compare these numbers with IBM SWG, MSFT or Oracle software revenues, I think it would be easy to conclude they haven’t captured a big marketshare in the enterprise space.  I think this is fundamentally due to their lack of business relationship, partnerships, and investments in sales & marketing.

So, I think this is a good time for IBM to enter the market.

In terms of opportunity and access to market, IBM is a global company with delivery centers around the world. It has business segments that align well with customers considering or transitioning to Cloud Computing. To understand the potential opportunity for IBM better, let's look at some numbers. 

IBM Development & Test Cloud is an offering from Global Technology Services (GTS):

The numbers above are in millions.  In 2009, GTS revenue was around $37B with a gross margin of around 35%.

There are several business lines in GTS:

• Strategic Outsourcing (SO) – This segment offers outsourcing services to commercial and public sector.  In 2009, IBM’s SO revenue was $19.3B.
• Integrated Technology Services (ITS) – This segment offers different IT services (project based) from IT strategy –> middleware services –> infrastructure services.  In 2009, ITS’ revenue was $8.7B.
• Business Transformation Outsourcing (BTO) – This segment focuses primarily on business process outsourcing (BPO), and “IT transformation” services.  In 2009, BTO’s revenue was $2.2B.
• Maintenance – This segment offers product maintenance and support services.  In 2009, GTS maintenance revenue contribution was almost $7B.

IBM has C-level relationships in Fortune companies in all industries.   Some of these companies have already entrusted IBM with their IT infrastructure and mission critical systems.  This puts IBM in a huge advantage over other service providers. 

As SO contracts are renewed, and as ITS engages customers in IT strategy and middleware services, IBM should also be able to harvest opportunities for both private cloud as well as public cloud. 

[N.B.  The cool thing about Cloud services is that they are not like SO contracts (i.e. fixed).  Once you sign up a customer, as long as you’re meeting your SLAs, and manage the offering in terms of features/capabilities, you should be able to maintain a profitable recurring revenue stream (i.e. reduced sales & marketing costs, reduced infrastructure costs through efficient multi-tenant delivery).]

Consider this....If IBM were to convert 10% of 2009 GTS revenue from existing base to Cloud, let's say over the next 3 years, they would make about $3B in Cloud revenue by 2013…Now, that’s revenue & marketshare.

Here is another reason why Cloud could help IBM.    IBM Software Group booked $22B of revenue in 2009:

SWG revenue breaks down as follows:

• Cross-brand middleware:  This is combined revenue from WebSphere, Tivoli, Lotus, Rational, Information Management worth over $12B.  IBM doesn’t break down the revenue by brand. 
• Other middleware: This include legacy middleware such as CICS & IMS.  IBM made over $4.6B there.
• Operating Systems: This includes software such as zOS, AIX, AS/400, & TPF.  In 2009, the OS revenue was > $2.1B.  This is dependent on how IBM’s hardware group (Systems & Technology Group) performs.
• Product Lifecycle Management (PLM): I think it is a joint venture with Dassault Systems.
• Other: This includes all IBM Software Group services (aka Lab services).  In 2009, the revenue for this part was $1.4B.

As you can see above, except for lab services, x-brand middleware is the only segment that’s been reporting growth. There are two reasons for this:

• Acquisitions: IBM has made some big acquisitions in this space: (i.e. Cognos for $5B, FileNet for $1.7B, Sterling Commerce for $1.2B…).  Acquisitions help IBM book new business.
• Renewal rates: This is recurring revenue from existing customers.  I was told by a software sales exec, average renewal rates for a successful enterprise software company is around 98% (depending on the product, maturity, etc).   So, this is helping IBM SWG maintain revenue and marketshare.

I haven’t heard of any new notable products out of SWG lately.  So, looking at the above, I think it is fair to conclude acquisitions have been the primary vehicle for growth in SWG.  So, with Cloud Computing, SWG  should be able to develop a new revenue stream.

So, for SWG, I think Cloud Computing can offer the following benefits:

• Use Cloud as a sales & delivery channel for SMB.  This would be very helpful to IBM.
• Offer a viable alternative to clients looking at other sourcing options
• In the beginning, I think Cloud can offer a parallel revenue stream for SWG particularly for WebSphere, Tivoli, and Rational
• Compete with other private cloud vendors and public cloud service providers
• Partners and alliances help IBM realize almost a third of its total revenue.  SWG gains a lot from these GSIs and ISVs.  SWG can offer new solutions to these partners to help grow its revenue.  Also, help ISVs cloudify their solutions.

All of the above should help IBM sustain growth.

[N.B. There is some difference between private and public clouds in terms of revenue.
Software is a high margin business.  In the case of IBM SWG, the gross margin for SWG was 86%.  The reason for this is software licensing & maintenance costs.  With public clouds, this is radically different. It is a volume business.  For IBM to be profitable in the public cloud space, they must sign up more and more customers.  On the private cloud side, they should be able to do better.]
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IBM is building a good story here.  From SWG side, with WebSphere CloudBurst, the recent acquisition of Cast Iron, and Rational Software Delivery Services, IBM is putting together all the asset to enable Cloud Computing for the enterprise.  On the GTS side, IBM is in a good position to create opportunities, and work with enterprise customers to help transition to Cloud.

Finally, from a competitive perspective, in the enterprise space (as opposed to consumer space), I don’t think IBM needs to worry too much about AWS or Google.  As long as IBM prices its public cloud offerings from GTS, Lotus, etc competitively, and maintain a close relationship with enterprise accounts, I think they should be able to do OK.

In the enterprise space, I think SWG should keep an eye on Oracle and VMWare on one side, and MSFT on the other.  GTS will have to worry about the usual competitors such as CSC, HP/EDS, etc...

vmforce: Is Salesforce getting into IaaS?

VMware and SalesForce.com have scheduled a joint webcast on April 27th. Rumors are circulating that Salesforce is planning to offer IaaS based on VMware virtualization platform. 
If true, this would be a good move for Salesforce for the following reasons:

• Currently with Force.com, you can build and deploy only a limited set of applications (i.e. CRM centric, business process-based/case-management types of apps).   With IaaS, it will possible to deploy all sorts of applications on their platform. 
• Building on top of VMware virtualization stack (i.e. vSphere), Salesforce should be able to facilitate integration and management of hybrid computing environments for those enterprises that have already invested in VMware.   This would be a huge advantage over competitors such as Amazon & Azure.
• Azure already offers hosting (Windows).  In some cases, an IaaS from Salesforce may be viable alternative to MSFT.
• Obviously, an IaaS Cloud Service offering enables Salesforce to engage enterprise customers on multiple levels thereby increasing marketshare.

So, what about VMware?   How would this help them?
VMware wants to be the technology backbone for all IaaS providers.  This is evident in their vCloud initiatives, and investments in vCloud Express and Terremark.   Salesforce.com is a key player in Cloud computing.  Enabling Salesforce deliver an IaaS on top of their virtualization stack is a major deal for them.  If the model proves successful, it can become a big headache for Amazon, Azure, and GAE. 
VMware also sees itself as a platform for hybrid Cloud Computing:

At this point, this is all speculation.  We should find out more on April 27th. 
What are your thoughts about vmforce?  Do you think VMware would be able to strike a similar deal with Google, eBay or Yahoo to offer an IaaS?

IBM POWER7: Smarter Systems for Smarter Planet

Yesterday I attended an IBM event on POWER7 in Los Angeles.  The event was designed to show how POWER7 is a game changer in terms of form factor, massive parallelism and performance, virtualization, workload consolidation, integrated systems management, high availability,  energy consumption, and overall costs.

First, Ross Mauri gave an introduction to POWER series and innovation over the last decade.  He shared a lot of interesting metrics in terms of clients, migration patterns and experiences, key aspects of the system and overall score relative to competition… and he also shared some information on POWER7+, and POWER8 roadmap.  Next, John Shedletsky (VP, IBM SWG) gave a presentation on how IBM software is integrated and optimized on POWER7, and shared some case studies and competitive analysis in terms of workload performance and scalability, and cost.  Finally, Stan Pachura (CIO, The PMI Group) shared his experience with POWER7.  He described how PMI had been able to upgrade to POWER7, and consolidate iSeries & BI workloads without incurring any additional costs.

Some of the vendors mentioned in the presentations included HP, SUN (Oracle), and VMware :-)  Here is a link to the presentations:
https://www-950.ibm.com/events/wwe/grp/grp017.nsf/v16_agenda?openform&seminar=584RYCES&locale=en_US

Technology-centric approach to Enterprise Cloud Computing doesn’t work

There is a lot of Internet chatter and conversation on Cloud Computing.  Since 2007, Google Trends shows growing increase in Cloud search keywords:

Majority of these articles and posts though are primarily focused on technologies (i.e. virtualization, dynamic provisioning, security, management & automation, metering & chargeback) that enable building a Cloud infrastructure or platform.  Technology decisions and effective implementation are absolutely necessary, but building, operating, offering, and managing a Cloud transcend technology. 

Cloud Computing doesn’t arrive in a box of CDs.  It is an evolution in IT competency and operational model (i.e. Incident Management, Asset Management, Configuration Management, Change Management, Performance & Capacity Management, SLA Management).  A technology-centric approach to Cloud Computing does not address IT operational gaps.

One of the fundamental requirements for Cloud transition is IT standardization.  Standardization is key to IT simplification and cost reduction, and requires an analysis of both IT and application portfolio.  In this regard, an analysis of the various workloads, performance characteristics, HW/SW compatibility & infrastructure requirements, application strategy such as any decommissioning, re-hosting, or outsourcing plans,… and review of enterprise architecture are necessary to establish standard configuration templates.  Without such an analysis, it would be very difficult to determine the right set of services to offer in the enterprise.  A technology-centric approach to Cloud Computing does not address IT standardization.

As I said in a previous post, there are different entry-points to Cloud Computing.   There are a couple of implications here.  First, organizations choose different strategies and approaches for IT cloudification based on their priorities.   Second, organizations are at different levels of IT maturity.  Some may have experience building and running CoEs. Some may have experience operating & managing shared services centers. Finally, some may already be running a Cloud (or have already implemented an on-demand and utility-based shared infrastructure way before the term “Cloud” was in vogue.) So, there is a lot of considerations in terms of organizational maturity, alignment, change management that are essential to a successful Cloud transition. These are not addressed by a technology-focused approach to Cloud Computing.

These were just some examples.  So, next time when you get a visit from a vendor, showing you a quick demo of 1000-node cluster, with dynamic scaling may be including spillover to EC2, a nice management interface, etc, a question to consider is how do I operationalize this? 

The enterprise has to deal with a mixed bag of virtualization vendors…

A couple of weeks ago, I was at Oracle Open World and attended a good session on JRockit (JRockit: What’s new & What’s coming).  The presenters were from JRockit lab in Sweden, and they presented many things from  new features, JVM performance, JRockit Mission Control (JRMC), JRockit Real Time (JRRT), and JRockit Virtual Edition (JRVE).   JRVE is a JVM that sits directly on bare metal hypervisor (it eliminates the OS layer, thus offering better performance, and simplification in terms of installation, configuration and maintenance).

Back in the BEA days, they showed a prototype of WLS VE running on JRVE at VMWorld in 2007.   That version was running on VMWare’s ESX.  With this version, it only supports and is certified on Oracle VM… Not a big surprise, if you think about it.  Since Oracle’s acquisition of Virtual Iron, Oracle has been optimizing its stack on its own virtualization infrastructure…

I was talking to a customer the other day to ask them about their Virtualization strategy.  This is large company that has deployed different types of servers and OS for different kinds of workload.  Currently, for Microsoft platform, they are using VMWare (when I asked him about Hyper-V, he said no plans yet).  For Linux, they are standardizing on RHT Enterprise Virtualization (KVM)… Oh, not to forget, on the mainframe, they are using zVM.

It occurred to me there is already a myriad of different virtualization tools and technologies deployed in the enterprise.  With Oracle’s solution strategy, there will be compelling reasons for many to deploy yet another virtualization technology in their environment (i.e. Oracle PaaS).  Furthermore, in addition to virtual machines and appliances deployed within the enterprise, many enterprises that adopt Cloud computing (hybrid clouds) will have to deal with additional virtualization infrastructures (i.e. EC2), their set of provisioning APIs and other management interfaces… 

The good news is that major virtualization vendors already support DTMF standardization efforts (i.e. OVF, VMAN) in their solutions or plan to support it.  There are also new standardization efforts around open APIs (i.e. vCloud) to abstract the virtualization technology, and provide a standard programming model to provision and consume virtual resources as well as support those interoperability use cases in the hybrid Clouds…  On the other side of spectrum, there is a growing number of virtualization vendors with provisioning solutions to facilitate packaging, grouping of related VMs (i.e. vApp)  for multi-tiered applications.

So, I don’t think most enterprises can standardize on a single virtualization vendor.  The trick is to figure out a virtualization management strategy that provides unified visibility and control in terms of asset & configuration management as well as infrastructure operation and governance.  Let me know what you think…

The economics of multi-tenancy and its effect on the overall service offering…

One of the key design decisions for Cloud Computing implementers is multi-tenancy.  The idea is to abstract a pool of sharable resources (i.e. server, database) at the right layer, and to the right degree to optimize the number of tenants served by the resource.   Obviously, this needs to be done in balance to the particular service offered, the context in which the service is used, and challenges in terms of ongoing Cloud infrastructure/platform operation and maintenance, Terms of Service, etc…
Multi-tenancy has broad impact on the overall service offering from architecture and operation to financial management.  For service providers (including private Clouds implemented by shared services in many large organizations), it bears direct financial impact with regards to level of asset utilization and return-on-assets [i.e. total revenue from all tenants / (assets costs + asset operation & maintenance)].  It  also effects software licensing costs, resources required for ongoing service operation and configuration management, support, etc…
There is a spectrum of multi-tenancy:

At the server level, the unit of deployment is Virtual Machine (VM).  Each tenant is offered a VM to provide isolation and protection from other tenants.  So, a key question in this shared tenancy model is VM density.  How many VMs can be carved out on a physical server resource?  Other key considerations involve service provider's average cost of a VM (i.e. power, cooling, hardware and software costs, ongoing support and maintenance, etc)…
At the next level, there is platform as a service.  Examples of that would include Google App Engine (GAE) or Force.com.   On these platforms, unit of deployment is an application.  As an example, on GAE, tenants are provisioned their own application server (Jetty) running on Google’s infrastructure.   Similarly, on Force.com, each developer is provisioned a Resin app server in the to prevent tenants from stepping on each other…
At the top, a single code-base application is shared by multiple tenants.  A well-known example would be SalesForce.com.  Depending on the service implementation and tenancy model, as new tenants are provisioned, different levels of resource sharing may occur…  [Please have a look at the following MSDN article on Multi-Tenant Data Architecture.]
At each level, the following issues should be continually considered:

• Tenancy Density: How many tenants can be instantiated on a physical unit of deployment?  
• Cost / Tenant:  What is the average cost / tenant?  The cost includes everything from infrastructure costs (i.e. facilities, power, cooling, Telco provider) to hardware components including server, storage, network to software licensing costs, service maintenance and support…
• Service Design: Does the tenancy model enhance the service for the target customers?  For example, many organizations are looking at the Cloud to simplify their IT by offloading infrastructure operation and maintenance costs to Cloud service providers.  In the lower level, organizations are still required to staff for operation, monitoring, and support of their applications on the Cloud infrastructure…
• etc…

So, the design decisions and technology selections around multi-tenancy should not be approached casually, as it has fundamental impact on the service, its profitability, as well as operation and maintenance.

Oracle, Sun’s assets, Gridification of FMW, and Cloud Computing

Oracle’s acquisition of Sun hit a snag in EU earlier this month. According to their statement, the EC is concerned that Oracle (the largest database vendor) + Sun’s MySQL (the largest open-source db) would be an anti-competitive combination in their market.  So, they are going to look at this further and make a ruling by Jan 2010.

This is unfortunate for Sun’s customers and also business partners, since it delays any communication from Oracle on product support, strategy, plans, roadmap, etc.  Customers must wait to get more details on how this acquisition may effect their investments in Sun technologies.   For Sun’s business partners, deals are probably on hold until Oracle is legally able to unveil more information. 

There are a lot of rumors around this acquisition.  This reminds of when Oracle acquired BEA.  Back then, I remember hearing some wild speculations about what Oracle might do with BEA assets.  Fast-forward to Fusion Middleware (FMW)11g, JRocket & WebLogic  (along with Coherence) are now key components of FMW, more specifically, Application Grid, and majority of the BEA assets are incorporated into other layers of FMW (i.e. SOA, BPM).  

So, in terms of Sun acquisition, we are just going to have to wait until EC’s ruling to get more details from Oracle :-[   Now, since my interest is in Cloud Computing, I thought it would be interesting to speculate what Oracle may do with Sun technologies once they close the deal…  Before we being to discuss Sun’s Cloud Computing related assets, let’s take a look where these companies are vis-a-vis Cloud Computing.

Sun has long had a vision for network-based computing dating back to a couple of decades ago.  However, their most recent efforts have involved Network.com where they offered a public Grid over the Internet, followed by Caroline which delivers a Platform-as-a-Service based on OpenSolaris, Sun’s virtualization technologies, and HPC solutions.   At this point, some of Sun’s partners (i.e. webappVM, Vertica) have deployed on Caroline.

As for Oracle, there hasn’t been any major announcements around their own Cloud platform.  So far, their efforts have involved offering a set of AMIs on Amazon + Cloud DB backup, and data encryption (which is really a function of Oracle database itself).  

Here is a high-level overview of related assets:

	Sun	Oracle
Compute Hardware	Sun offers a range of servers powered by its own chip technologies as well as commodity x86/x64 processors.  These solutions have been used at large scale internet service providers such as STRATO	None
Compute Storage	Sun offers a range of high performance and scalable storage solutions	None
Compute Network	Sun offers a range of networking solutions from Ethernet-based solutions, to FC SAN adapters & switches, and high performance computing/low latency solutions (Infiniband)	None
Operating Systems	Solaris – Sun’s legacy operating system.  The last version of this product is Solaris 10 (2005). OpenSolaris – This is the open-source version of Solaris and Sun’s strategic OS.   It is a core technology in Sun Open Cloud.	Oracle offers its own distro of Linux based on Red Hat
Server Virtualization	OS-Level virtualization - Sun has integrated Xen into OpenSolaris operating system and offers different levels of resource virtualization (i.e. Zones, Containers, DSC, Crossbow…) Logical Domains (LDoms) – Sun hardware based virtualization solution	Oracle VM
Storage Virtualization	Sun offers a range of storage virtualization solutions	None
Desktop Virtualization	Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Sun Virtual Box	None
Virtualization Management	xVM Ops Center OpenSolaris offers built-in resource management facilities for virtual & physical environments	Oracle VM + Virtual Iron Oracle VM Manager Oracle Enterprise Manager
High  Performance Computing (HPC)	Sun offers a complete stack for HPC workloads (i.e. Sun Constellation System)	Oracle Database Real Application Clusters (RAC) Automatic Storage Management
Application Support	GlassFish MySQL NetBeans	FMW Oracle DB Suites of Eclipse based and non-Eclipse based tools
Systems Management	N1 Service Provisioning Service (SPS) Sun Management Center	Oracle Enterprise Manager

As far as Cloud Computing, here is what I think Oracle will do:

• Sun hardware – This should be pretty straight forward.  I think Oracle will just continue forward with Sun hardware and existing plans.  From an organizational model, there will probably be a new hardware division including all former Sun server, network, and storage groups.  From a Cloud perspective, Oracle will deliver private Cloud offerings based on Sun hardware and an “Oracle-optimized” software stack.
• Sun virtualization – Although both Oracle & Sun have implemented their hypervisors based on Xen, Sun has integrated virtualization at the OS level (similar to Red Hat) whereas in Oracle’s case, it is bare-metal hypervisor.  I think the product management team will decide to keep both to offer customers choices, but probably standardize on a single virtual management framework.  In addition, this acquisition will enhance Oracle’s virtualization portfolio with network and storage virtualization solutions as well as desktop virtualization.  I think Oracle will invest in all virtualization technology areas including VDI, as they will be considered growth areas.
• OpenSolaris – I think Oracle will create an open-source software division to manage OpenSolaris, Sun Cloud, and other software assets & open-source projects.  I also think they will let the developer community to continue to use tools like Netbeans for the foreseeable future.
• Public Cloud – After this acquisition, Oracle will be able to offer a public Cloud based on OpenSolaris.  Within a short period of time, I expect to see Oracle’s software available on Sun Cloud.  I also expect Oracle to continue to rally the industry around Cloud standardization…
• Systems Management – At some point, after they figure out how to establish a line between open-source and commercial solutions, Oracle will probably port all of Sun systems management solutions to Oracle Enterprise Manager for unified operation and management.

Linux Foundation Report

Following my post on VMWare’s acquisition of SpringSource, a friend of mine alerted me to the latest report from Linux Foundation. It contains various statistics on the Kernel development including contributors (both individuals & vendors). On page 11, it shows Red Hat as #1, followed by IBM, Novell, Intel…

With all this investment and involvement, Red Hat’s virtualization strategy, and not to forget Xen and vendors like Citrix, I think competitive pressure on VMWare will intensify much more in the next 12 – 18 months…

VMWare’s acquisition of SpringSource

Last week, VMWare announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire SpringSource, an open-source enterprise Java vendor. This was a significant development, because SpringSource brings new assets and capabilities beyond virtualization to VMWare (i.e. CloudFoundry).

In VMWare’s press release, the motivation for the acquisition is described as follows: “Together, VMware and SpringSource plan to further innovate and develop integrated Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions that can be hosted at customer datacenters or at cloud service providers.“

I think the acquisition was also influenced by Red Hat’s virtualization strategy, Linux-based virtualization (KVM), its open-source approach to virtualization management (libvirt, oVirt, Thincrust…) and how it’s rallying the open source community around Cloud Computing… Also, Red Hat offers a complete middleware stack (JBoss, MRG), Systems Management solutions (Red Hat Network Satellite, JBoss Operations Network). Acquisition of SpringSource enables VMWare to compete with Red Hat and offer customers an alternative.

Who is SpringSource?

SpringSource created and leads the open source Spring framework. They offer a set of tools + consulting & support to facilitate the enterprise adoption of Spring and related open-source technologies. They are very active in other open-source projects and industry groups (Tomcat, Groovy, Grails, OSGi…)

Here are a few highlights:

• Open source leadership – Many of the Spring & Tomcat committers work for SpringSource. By acquisition, SpringSource also leads Groovy & Grails.
• Spring has excellent traction in the enterprise. Some of SpringSource’s customers include JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, LinkedIn… And, they are continuing their impressive growth.
• They have assembled a strong management team including previous executives from JBoss & BEA
• They have developed key partnerships and alliances with Global Systems Integrators and solution providers
• CloudFoundry – This is a new offering from SpringSource. It is a Spring-based Cloud solution development & deployment framework optimized for AWS (it leverages CloudTools).

Why would VMWare buy SpringSource?

SpringSource brings proven & popular technologies to VMWare that don’t overlap with their existing portfolio. It fills its technology gaps above the infrastructure & OS layers. It enables VMWare to reach new customers.

VMWare is a leader in the infrastructure virtualization space. They engage infrastructure architects and sell to data center managers. They sell from bottom up or at the C-level (i.e. cost reduction, simplification).

VMWare doesn’t speak middleware & application frameworks. Similarly, most middleware architects don’t get virtualization. First, SpringSource should be able to raise awareness about virtualization with their existing customer base (middleware architects & developers). This should open up new opportunities for VMWare fairly quickly… Next, VMWare should be able to bring SpringSource in front of their customers. That will also create new opportunities for both companies.

With CloudFoundry, VMWare is able to offer a choice to customers (private or public). By entering the market early, and early engagements with customers on both VSphere & CloudFoundry, VMWare gets a head start understanding the market requirements which enables them to plan and design more competitive Cloud solutions. That is a big advantage.

What about Red Hat?

Red Hat’s approach is different from VMWare. Their strategy is to provide an open-source virtualization solution based on Linux, and provide a unified management framework to address not just virtual infrastructure, but virtual desktops as well.

One of the advantages for Red Hat is that Linux is the most widely deployed OS in the enterprise. This is powered by their big alliance and partnership programs with mega vendors like IBM & HP. This is in balance with VMWare’s partnership program & distribution model (i.e. embedded hypervisor). However, Red Hat’s challenge remains to generalize its efforts and solutions for all Linux distributions.

Final thoughts

I think this is a market defining acquisition. It gives other Cloud Computing vendors some direction to follow. As we move forward, I think the following trends will get stronger:

• More lightweight middleware solutions in the Cloud from open source & mega vendors (i.e. IBM, Oracle)
• More systems management tools in the Cloud from both open source & commercial
• More middleware & systems management appliances

A recurring question for me is what AWS’s strategy is (or should be) with regards to growth? Should they remain an infrastructure provider and incrementally build out more services (organic growth)? Should they continue to rely on partners for value-add services and distribution channel? Is it time for AWS to consider acquisition for growth? What would you do, if you were running AWS?

JVM on “Bare Metal”

This past weekend, I watched a very good presentation by Mick Jordan, the lead on Sun’s Project Guest VM, discuss challenges and issues in porting Java VM to run directly on Xen hypervisor.

The motivation for virtualization at the Java VM-level is as follows:

• Enhance performance by eliminating the OS layer and also removing some of the redundant activities in different layers (i.e. task management, memory management)
• Simplify development & administration
• Remove architectural constraints and restrictions at the OS layer to pave the way for more innovation

If you have any interest in the virtualization space, I highly recommend this talk. It is about 45 minutes long, but I think it is well worth it:

This is part of a broader research at Sun (Maxine) and borrows from other Sun projects such as VirtualBox. I think Sun is doing a really good job of evolving Java first as a platform and now as an extensible OS alternative.

As referenced in the presentation, other vendors have already done similar things i.e. BEA’s LiquidVM (on VMWare hypervisor), IBM J9 Libra (Xen):

Libra: a Library OS for a JVM

View more documents from Eric Van hensbergen.

Particularly for certain types of applications (i.e. trading), performance is a critical issue. Using virtualization without degrading performance amplifies business value.

The race for innovation and speed continues…

A quick overview of Cloud Computing

Here is a presentation that I recently shared with a group of IT managers:

Cloud Computing overview and case study

View more documents from babakh.

Transitive acquisition -- Great, but maybe misunderstood

Autonomic/on-demand/elastic computing continues to be a very hot topic. Virtualization is a key technology and enabler. As usual, vendors are quick to position solutions in the infrastructure virtualization space...

Earlier this week, IBM announced it had acquired Transitive Corporation. Transitive was labeled as a cross-platform virtualization solution. This isn't accurate.

Transitive's key value is that it provides an alternative to porting applications from one system architecture to another. It has been the technology behind PowerVM Lx86 (formerly System p Applicaiton Virtual Environment) and sits below the actual virtualization layer.

Transitive allows re-platforming applications from one system to another without porting and recompilation. It does that through dynamic analysis and translation of processor instructions (i.e. x86 -> System p). This is huge value. From a server virtualization engine (i.e. hypervisor), it is the PowerVM that creates the logical partitions not Transitive. I think it is important to make the distinction.

So, what is this acquisition about and why now?

(1) Virtualization is topping the list of the CIO agenda. Transitive has been a core technology and shipped as part of IBM's PowerVM. It also has OEM agreements with HP. Could this be a defensive play against HP?

(2) SUN is in trouble and there are doubts about its future. Transitive provides several paths from SPARC -> x86. Transitive positions IBM as a viable alternative with a migration path to displace SUN.

On the more immediate side, Transitive gives IBM enhanced offerings to help customers with cost reduction measures such as server consolidation and application decommissioning.

I was an IBM VM systems programmer in previous life and am a strong believer in the value virtualization technologies. IBM has a long history with virtualization. I think Transitive's acquisition is a smart move and has many potential for MSPs, VARs, and ISVs...