For over five years, I have been writing about the convergence of
data center, Internet and software-development technologies that has
become known as cloud computing. I started writing on my personal blog in December 2006, then went on to write CNET’s The Wisdom of Clouds for the last three years.

I’ve also spent the last three years helping develop Cisco’s cloud
strategy, and am just about to begin an adventure as vice president of
product strategy for enterprise cloud management vendor enStratus.

Now, as I find myself honored with the opportunity to contribute
regularly to GigaOM’s cloud coverage, I find myself thinking a lot about
what I’ve learned in those five years. So, for my first post–and in an
attempt to put some shape to my model of cloud computing–I thought I’d
walk through my most-important observations to date. At worst, if I get
it wrong, I hope you’ll straighten me out.

The cornerstone of everything I believe about the cloud can be summarized in one simple statement:

Cloud computing is an application-centric operations model.

What in the world does that mean? Well, let’s begin with the “cloud is an operations model” part. I wrote a post that describes this concept in detail a couple of years ago.

The operations model is one that has been discussed ad nauseum in the
last couple of years, but as a quick recap, it centers on delivery of
IT capabilities at scale, on demand, typically in a multi-tenant
environment. It is important to understand that, while new technologies
are indeed being developed for cloud, these technologies are being
developed to fit the operations model, not the other way around.

The application-centric part of that statement is derived from the
very nature of cloud itself. Traditionally, IT operations has been a
server-centic affair:

• We buy a server
• We assign that server an IP address and wire it to a switch port
• We choose an operating system (which, I argue, is actually part of
  the server from an operations perspective), then install applications
• Finally, we monitor the health of the system based on–wait for it–server metrics: CPU and memory utilization, I/O rates, etc.

Now, think about consuming a public cloud service. If you don’t own
the infrastructure you are consuming, you don’t own the server. You may
own the operating system if you are using an infrastructure service,
such as Amazon’s EC2, but for most cloud services, you won’t even have that luxury.

What you do bring to the table–er, service–is code, data,
configuration metadata and/or policies that are, in fact, what makes any
cloud service valuable to you as an individual or an organization. Your
task in consuming a cloud service is to deliver those elements to a
service that turns them into functionality that drives business value.

Thus, a new order of operations has to evolve in order to meet the demands of this new model. The diagram below, borrowed from my first post on the topic of cloud’s effects on operations,
is how I see that order breaking down. Read that post to get a sense of
what responsibility is assigned to each of these roles.

In coming posts, I want to dig deep into the consequences of
application-centricity in cloud, and in enterprise IT, in general. There
are so many interesting corollaries, exceptions and possibilities that
I’m looking forward to a long conversation with you, GigaOM’s readers.
Please do not hesitate to give me feedback via comments. I can also be
found on Twitter at @jamesurquhart.

Image courtesy of Gary Orenstein.

by  Dan Nosowitz

When Wenceslao Casares was building the Argentine online brokerage Patagon in the mid 90s, he pretty much had to build everything from scratch — from the servers to storage. With spotty infrastructure and broadband access across Latin America, it was a real challenge to get the “E-trade of Latin America” off the ground.

Casares couldn’t foresee a time where things would get any easier outside the United States. “If you had told me back then, I would have had a very hard time believing you,” he said. “The leapfrog in terms of connectivity has been impressive.”

Here in the United States, cloud computing has allowed emerging companies to build much faster and much cheaper. But in Latin America, the development of the cloud has been nothing short of transformative. And developments are moving rapidly. Last year, Brazil experienced its fastest economic growth in almost two decades. Gross domestic product expansion was double what economists had expected the country to reach.

“It is really leveling the playing field. I was surprised to see them take to the cloud even faster than here [in the US],” Casares says.

Casares and Rich Lechner, IBM’s vice president of cloud and services marketing, discussed the opportunity for cloud services in Latin America this morning during GigaOM’s Structure conference.

While the region has been behind the United States in terms of technology and internet infrastructure, that might actually be an advantage when it comes to deploying the cloud now. “They don’t have as much of a legacy infrastructure to contend with. It’s existing in some areas and not in others. You can deploy it where it exists an provide across the region,” Lechner said.

There are big opportunities for US companies in countries like Brazil, where local cloud services are just starting to materialize. IBM has one of its six global data centers in Sao Paulo as well as two cloud innovation and security centers.

But there are still challenges to overcome, even in Brazil. Speed isn’t universally available. Broadband access is very spotty. “It’s faster and cheaper than in U.S. in some places but the fiber might not make it down the road. It looks like here five years ago,” Casares said. Still, the deployment of the cloud is pushing the extension of broadband services.

Overall, Casares  is confident. ”They are building infrastructure remarkably fast,” he said. “What used to take 10 years in now being done in 12-18 months.”