Who's Managing Your PaaS Apps?

Sam Charrington recently posted a nice article called The Disintegration of PaaS. In it, he describes how early PaaS providers (PaaS 1.0) locked developers into their stacks and essentially prevented the movement of these apps onto other PaaS platforms. Sam also describes the coming of “PaaS 2.0,” a more open platform that allows different development stack modules for databases, application servers, etc. to be included within your application stack. PaaS 2.0 providers will also cultivate the community of tools that can be used within a deployment stack. The hope is that PaaS 2.0 will level the playing field and focus these providers on what matters most – service quality and customer service.

That takes me to the part that no one is really talking about when it comes to PaaS – the management aspect. Up to this point, we have more often talked about the development side (pre-production). But, PaaS then hosts the application created. How will organizations dictate the SLAs to be in place when the application is live for others to consume (i.e. scale-up, scale-down, etc.)? How will they relay their DR requirements, or moreover how will PaaS providers allow for different RTO/RPO strategies?

In order for PaaS to live up to its hype of becoming mainstream and making it ever easier for consumers to use the cloud, providers need a mechanism for capturing an application’s service level requirements. Building an app and placing it in the cloud is one thing, but if we actually want to allow IT to leverage the cloud there are best practices and specific business policies that need to be communicated in some way. Without this capability, PaaS will only be used for non-mission-critical workloads.

This is where cloud management solutions come in. For IaaS, we have talked about how cloud management solutions have helped to deploy and manage applications and workloads in the clouds. I think without these tools, PaaS players will not be able to provide the second part of their offering. PaaS providers need to leverage these mainstream tools and provide some interface to them.

As I write about this, I am also thinking about how we are further validating the need for an application-centric approach.  As PaaS adoption continues it will become more apparent that it is not about provisioning and managing servers or groups of servers in the cloud (infrastructure-centric), but rather the application or service. We need context! Your customers care about consuming your applications and services, and expect a certain level of service; they don’t care about servers. The notion of PaaS is to further hide the IaaS complexity behind the main goal: build and deploy apps. Now I think is the time for this approach to take center stage.

Tweet

The Kickoff

It is interesting to see the continued rapid climb of social media platforms and usage, and the influence it is having on the definition of the professional. It's not enough to have a polished resume and a lengthy career. You have to SHOW people that you are alive. And by alive, I mean educate the industry, be visible, and be viral. You have to be able to influence the masses and be digitally social. This is probably ironic for the classic introvert that goes into IT in the first place. While I have created many blog entries and articles before, I wanted to create a launching pad for sharing my own professional experience and thoughts (not to mention what's on my mind every once in a while).

Here's just a little about me: My name is Sam Somashekar, and I have spent the past 18+ years in IT software. My functional experience spans enterprise software development, product management, marketing, market research and strategy, and business development, as both a leader and an individual contributor. My industry experience includes cloud computing, data center automation, service management/automation, database management, and green IT. Currently I lead global marketing and business development efforts at Kaavo, a cloud management company. My past experience includes 15+ years at Computer Associates/CA/CA Technologies, and 7+ years in a supermarket chain.

I have always been passionate on creating solutions that matter most to customers and the market. I believe that an organization must fully understand its customers and the market, and have the ability to adjust to changing needs and forecasted potential. These are essential for building and sustaining a strong and successful business.

I chose the title "The Stairway to the Clouds" to show that the leap to cloud computing is not a leap at all. As we grapple with all that the cloud has to offer, we must realize that to get there is a series of iterative steps, especially for existing IT departments. Even for IT that starts in the cloud, one needs to practice a measurable closed-loop approach to truly harness its power. When used correctly, the cloud allows a business to go-to-market faster, scale up/down on-demand, optimize costs, and increase service quality and availability.

I hope that I can show that the steps toward the cloud will not stop there, but continue on and evolve towards human computing methods - a world where technology is simply used to satisfy our personal needs and wants in a way that naturally encompasses human usability. Technology needs to work for us; we should not have to work for technology. And to create effective solutions, it is important to understand the psychology behind the buyers and users as well as their patterns of usage and influence. Some of my inspiration comes from the book Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies by Ben Schneiderman.

So sit back and enjoy the ride. I hope that you'll come back every now and again to see me express my thoughts, concerns, and experience, as we take the Stairway to the Clouds and towards human computing.

Tweet