Hanuk's Microsoft Platform Strategy Blog : Cloud Computing

Cost Oriented Architecture of Cloud Applications

hanuk — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:31:58 GMT

As I was speaking to a group of customers few days ago, one question kept coming back - the impact of the architecture decisions on the monthly charges. The operational expenses of an application deployed to Cloud can be significantly impacted by the architecture decisions. Typical Cloud storage costs around $0.15/GB/month. Imagine if one decides to store all the web logs (for behavior tracking) in such a storage. one can pay huge monthly bill because of this decision.

Similarly, if an eCommerce application uses huge product catalog like that of a consumer retail web site, the merchandizing process can leave lot of retired products in the storage; unless data archival strategy is part of the core architecture, the opex of the application can dramatically increase as the time progresses.

Same principle can be applied to the growth of the transactional information in Cloud based applications. The event streams (system, application, business) generated through the instrumentation can start adding to the monthly opex if the architecture does not take into the account the cost implications. One may be better off by streaming those events out to an on-premise BI and problem management systems so that you may be better off by paying one time egress charges than the perpetual monthly storage costs.

The above is quite different for on-premise operations as there are no usage based fees. The data archival strategy is often an afterthought than the core part of the architecture.

So an architect transforming from an on-premise system space to the Cloud environment, need to be aware of the impact of the architecture decisions on the monthly bill.

I don't mean to introduce a new term but I think "Cost Oriented Architecture" is a fitting term that can be described through a collection of principles that will help architects create better Cloud based systems optimized for opex.

Here are a few random thoughts about the Cost Oriented Architecture for the Cloud:

Archive your data to a less expensive storage
Check the temporal growth of the reference and transactional data
Weigh the impact of perpetual storage costs versus one time egress charges to stream the data out
Events streams (system, application, business) resulting form the operations can be piped back to the less expensive storage
For large eCommerce sites, the generated behavioral tracking data can have a huge impact on the monthly opex.
Compression of text payloads wherever possible
Trim the number of active web servers in a web farm based on the heuristics of the operations
Use batch transactions if the underlying storage supports such a feature

- Hanu

SQL Azure CTP announced

hanuk — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:50:32 GMT

SQL Azure Community Technology Preview (CTP) was announced on 8/18/2009; SQL Azure is a database in the Cloud that helps easy provisioning of relational databases to be used by Azure as well as on premise applications. Here is the excerpt from the SQL Azure blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/ssds/default.aspx) that mentions the editions and the respective price points:

"SQL Azure Database will be available as a free trial until the service goes live in November. SQL Azure Database will be available in two editions: Web Edition, which will include up to 1 GB of relational data, priced at $9.99 per month, and Business Edition, which will include up to 10 GB of data, priced at $99.99 per month."

Additional information on SQL Azure can be found at : http://www.microsoft.com/azure/sql.mspx.

Other SQL Azure resources:

SQL Azure Database Features Overview

SQL Azure Database Datasheet

Frequently Asked Questions

SQL Azure Database Labs

MSDN: SQL Azure Database Developer Center

SQL Azure MSDN documentation can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee336279.aspx.

- Hanu

Microsoft loves everyone!

hanuk — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:22:33 GMT

CEO of Salesforce.com suggests that Microsoft hates everyone( http://venturebeat.com/2008/11/03/salesforcecom-on-microsoft-they-hate-everybody/) by suggesting that we are not an open cloud platform. His assertions are debatable and even his love to everyone is not unconditional (please see http://blogs.zoho.com/uncategorized/mr-benioff-tear-down-that-wall/ ) :)

When it comes to openness of the cloud platform, one has to differentiate between application portability (design time) and runtime interoperability. At its core, every compute cloud is proprietary in nature to some extent from the application portability perspective. Once you go with a service provider like Salesforce, Google, Amazon or Microsoft, you are locked into a Cloud platform. This is similar to SAP, Orcale and Microsoft business applications on-premise. In order for the design time portability to be a reality, lot of work needs to be done in the standards space so that if you don't like a service provider, you can extract your package of data and application and take it somewhere else. I am not sure if that will happen any time soon. Even Mr. Benioff admits that it is still a weakness with Salfesforce platform.

If you look at the runtime interoperability, it is the critical success factor to the very survival of any cloud platform. Considering the heterogeneity of the cloud consumers, run time interoperability limitations will only be detrimental to the provider and am sure even Microsoft is aware of that. Azure Services platform seems to be more comprehensive set of platform capabilities that can seamlessly interoperate with either on-premise systems or in-the-cloud systems. Who can argue with the runtime interoperability of REST and SOAP based layer surrounding Azure platform. For the foreseeable future, we have to live with on-premise systems be it Microsoft or otherwise. Whoever offers a comprehensive platform that will take into account the pure cloud based interoperability combined with organic coexistence of the on-premise systems, will make the transition painless and should be your friend!

So, Microsoft doesn’t hate everyone as Mr. Benioff suggests; they love everyone by offering the most flexible and extensible cloud platform that is interoperable with other cloud and on-premise systems through web services. Azure offers broad language and development tool choices (VB, C#, Java, Ruby, PHP, Python, Ecliplise, ...) than Salesforce.

In my professional life, I have seen the industry inflexion points that were touted as the panacea for all our computing illnesses – CASE, OO, CORBA, DCOM, SOA, MDM, MDA, etc. Whenever I see a new trend I am a bit cautiously optimistic including our own until I saw Azure in action.

I never been so excited as when I saw Azure cracking open the data center silos through standards based interoperability and in the process reducing IT inertia that often comes in the way business dynamics. Hammering out business deals between companies (Microsoft/Yahoo deal was an exception of course;)) based on the win/win framework is very straight forward and often IT’s inability to cope with the change (I would like to call this – IT Inertia) comes in the way of these deals from becoming a success. If you picture Azure running the applications of both ends of the partnership, IT risk is minimal compared to proprietary data centers. Even if Azure does not run both ends, partner IT orgs should easily bounce messages off the Azure cloud in a secure manner to attain seamless integration with optimal IT spend.

AZURE Services platform when fully implemented, creates a logical data center out of several physical proprietary data centers thereby reducing IT inertia and in the process paving way for each creation new business value chains!

Cheers,

Hanu