Proposal Results

A team of experts was assembled to analyze the 9 proposals from 7 vendors. They were Alan McConnell from Grand Rapids, MI, John Hagan from Norfolk, VA and Emad Hammoud from Centreville, VA. We created a scoring grid in a spreadsheet and set about the task.

Preliminary Questions:  These points are general in nature, but reflect the attention paid by the responders,

1. Did the proposals address the 4 questions asked in the RFQ? -- 3 did, 9 did not.
2. Did we get Service Level Agreement information?  -- 9 did, 0 did not

Issues related to proposed solution. There are 3 ways that the vendors proposed to solve the problem.

1. Provide empty virtual servers and all resources in a cloud shared environment. We could then install everything on them until we matched our current environment. This is cheap solution on the cloud side, but extremely expensive to re-create our current servers on new equipment. There is a great probability that we might not be successful.  -- 1 proposal offered this solution. 
2. Provide physical hardware and a VMWare virtual environment dedicated to our needs. We could copy our existing virtual machines into our dedicated environment and expect them to work. There are some disadvantages. Our physical environment is subject to physical failures such as a disk. The down time could be an issue. Also we are expected to manage infrastructure issues like networking from their firewall in and backups. We also have to monitor the hardware environment. -- 4 proposals offered this type of solution.
3. Provide a VMWare virtual environment on shared physical resources. Again we could copy our existing virtual machines into our dedicated environment and expect them to work. We wouldn't need to monitor or manage the infrastructure. We could add more resources without worrying about downtime. -- 5 proposals offered this type of solution.

The next step was to evaluate the 5 proposals that offered the true cloud characteristics. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing). Since all of the solutions were based on VMWare, we assumed that all would be equal. Also the quality and physical location of the data centers was assumed to be equal.  We placed a premium on the proposals that provided assistance to the customer in the following areas:

1. Assistance with Cloud Migration. Do procedures, manuals, videos exist that provide guidance to the customer that enables the on-boarding process to be as smooth as possible? Our IT staff must agree to the strategy for moving. Operations need to continue with the least interruption possible. Orderly guidance here will reduce the effort and cost substantially. -- 2 proposals addressed this issue, 3 did not.
2. Training for our IT staff in using the proposed environment. Do training materials, videos, manuals exist that will enable our IT staff to pick up their responsibilities in the new environment? Our operations must continue, applications need updating and generally we need to quickly understand how run things after migration.  -- 2 proposals addressed this issue, 3 did not.

At this point we selected two proposals that matched all requirements except price. For all 9 proposals the prices ranged from $87 to $422/VM/month. Some proposals had set up fees and other didn't. Our team chose not to base our selection on price, because of the different pricing schemes that were provided. In some cases you had a flat fee for stated CPU, RAM, storage and bandwidth. We could put up as many VMs as could use the environment. We would buy more resources as needed. Other pricing schemes talked about individual VMs. In summary, pricing was not a factor is our selection.

Our team has selected finalists as the proposals from VirtaCore and Vigilant Hosting. They are the most responsive to our RFQ. We are convinced that these vendors can take computers from any small to medium size organization and make them work on the cloud with all of the cloud advantages. Their assistance with migration and training will make the process smooth and painless. We will study these companies in more detail in the next post.

I would like to thanks my analysts and all of the vendors who participated in this RFQ project. The time and effort spent has been worthwhile.

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Next Post: After A Break        

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The RFQ Responses Are In

Review RFQ:  http://datacallsystems.com/rfq-2516-002a.asp

Of the 22 vendors contacted, 7 made proposals.

I would like to thank the following vendors for their proposals:

VirtaCore

Vigilant Hosting

Peer1

Go Grid

Bit Refinery

Connectria

SkyTap

The following were contact, but chose not to submit a proposal:

Amazon Elastic Web Services (EC2) - Rackspace Cloud  - Windows Azure

NJVC FedRamp government cloud - iWeb - SkyTap - VMRacks - GridSouth -  

Progent VMWare Services - Evozon - HMon - Lunahost -Bluelock -  

 - Virtual Machines - VMware Hosted - Greentree Hosting

 

Proposal Review

Some of my technical associates and I will be reviewing the proposals over the next two days. We will be communicating with the vendors for any clarifications that are needed.  The summary of our conculsions will be posted next.

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Next Post: Proposal Results
 

Additional resources:

Proposal Support         

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Waiting for Propsals

Waiting for RFQ responses from:

Amazon Elastic Web Services (EC2) - Rackspace Cloud - Go Grid - Windows Azure

NJVC FedRamp government cloud - iWeb - SkyTap - Peer1 - VMRacks - GridSouth - Connectria 

VirtaCore - Progent VMWare Services - Evozon - HMon - Lunahost -Bluelock - Bit Refinery 

Vigilant Hosting - Virtual Machines - VMware Hosted - Greentree Hosting

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Next Post: Proposal Results
 

Additional resources:

Moving to the Cloud          SME's Look Beyond Cost for Moving to the Cloud

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Getting Pricing Is Slow

I have determined that personally contacting each vendor is too slow. I have prepared an RFQ from my company at http://datacallsystems.com/rfq-2516-002a.asp . I will fill out a Contact Us form at each vendor's web site and wait and see what I get back.

I am adding some additional vendors:

Peer1

VMRacks

GridSouth

Connectria

VirtaCore

Progent VMWare Services

Evozon

HMon

Lunahost

Bluelock

Bit Refinery

Vigilant Hosting

Virtual Machines

VMware Hosted

Greentree Hosting

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Next Post: Waiting for Propsals
 

Additional resources:

Thinking Out Cloud          Cloud Storage - Pricing and Features          Cloud Pricing War Begins

Getting Some Prices

We have come a long way on our journey toward getting on the cloud. We have inventoried our existing computing power, anticipated our moving costs and analyzed whether we should even move to the cloud. Now it's time to compare costs and how we will manage our computing power on the cloud.

Remember what we know about our computing power. We need it when searching for prices.

           Disk:           RAM:                 CPU:

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Server 1:  C: 20, D: 20 -- 2 GB (2.99 Ghz)   -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Server 2:  C: 8         -- 2 GB (2.99 Ghz)   -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Server 3:  C: 14        -- 1 GB (3.00 Ghz)   -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Server 4:  C: 20, D: 30 -- 3.5 GB (3.00 Ghz) -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Bandwidth: 5 minute peak  In: 0.9 MB   Out: 6.4 MB

All Windows Servers and we have licenses.

-- A small warning -- My analysis confirms that there are no simple ways to select the right cloud vendor. It is currently a daunting challenge, but it is worth the effort.

I have chosen to explore the following cloud vendors:

• Amazon Elastic Web Services (EC2)
• Rackspace Cloud
• Go Grid
• Windows Azure
• NJVC FedRamp government cloud
• iWeb
• SkyTap

Each of these vendors seems to have at least a part of my solution.

I will explore my experience with each one in succeeding posts.

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Next Post: Getting Pricing Is Slow
 

Additional resources:

Thinking Out Cloud          Cloud Storage - Pricing and Features          Cloud Pricing War Begins

Non Cost Considerations

We now have collected enough measurements about our existing environment to communicate intelligently with a cloud provider. Now its time to consider any other things that might indicate that we shouldn't move to the cloud. I'm going to throw out all that I can think of. I welcome your suggestions too.

We can't move to the cloud because

• I need to see my computers everyday. This makes me feel safe.
• We process very secure information for the government. I don't think the cloud is safe enough.
• My brother in law is currently watching over my computers. He wouldn't have anything to do.
• We use the heat from our computers to keep our baked goods warm.

Some of my favorites from 65 Reasons Not To Move To The Cloud:

• Your career would be negatively impacted without a large IT budget and staff.
• You would be bored – No more coordinating the configuration, test, development, and integration of hardware and software? What would you do all day?
• You’re really fond of your consultants and systems integrators and would miss them terribly.
• Your internal security is 100% guaranteed – much more secure than having your data in the Cloud. You’d bet your life on it.
• Your internal infrastructure is much more reliable than that of the leading Cloud Service Providers.

David Linthicum has listed some good ones in To Move or Not to Move

Top 10 reasons ... to be careful about:

1. Security is largely immature, and currently requires specialized expertise.
2. Much of the technology is proprietary, and thus can cause lock-in.
3. Your dependent on the cloud computing provider for your IT resources, thus you could be exposed around outages and other service interruptions.
4. Using the Internet can cause network latency with some cloud applications.
5. In some cases cloud providers are more expensive than on-premise systems.
6. Not in control of costs if subscription prices go up in the future.
7. Integration between on-premise and cloud-based systems can be problematic.
8. Compliance issues could raise the risks of using cloud computing.
9. Data privacy issues could arise, if your cloud provider seeks to monetize the data in their system.
10. M&A activity around cloud providers, could mean constantly adjusting and readjusting your cloud computing solutions

If our benefits outweigh the riskd, then let's proceed to pricing our cloud needs.

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Next Post: Getting Some Prices

 

Additional resources:

65 Reasons Not To Move           Myths about Cloud Computing          To Move or Not to Move

Other Cost Considerations

We now have a pretty good picture of our cloud needs. Before we start getting prices, lets consider some other issues:

1. Besides cloud rental costs, what else should we consider?

          Do we have talent on staff to assist in the planning of the move to the cloud? In addition to the cloud resources we will need to make changes to our Internet protocol (IP) addresses and our Domain Name Server records. If we don't have the staff, we will need to hire consultants.

    2.  How do we move our existing computing power to the cloud?

         Related to staff for planning the move, do we have staff who can convert our existing computing power into a form that is transportable to the cloud. If not, consultants will be needed.

 

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Next Post: Non Cost Considerations

Additional resources:

Cloud Switch Blog      Cloud Sigma     Double Take   

Putting the Existing Picture Together

We have now inventoried our 4 servers and measured the Internet bandwidth. We should be able work with cloud providers better because we speak their language.

We can summarize our existing computing power as follows:

           Disk:           RAM:                 CPU:

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Server 1:  C: 20, D: 20 -- 2 GB (2.99 Ghz)   -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Server 2:  C: 8         -- 2 GB (2.99 Ghz)   -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Server 3:  C: 14        -- 1 GB (3.00 Ghz)   -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Server 4:  C: 20, D: 30 -- 3.5 GB (3.00 Ghz) -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Bandwidth: 5 minute peak  In: 0.9 MB   Out: 6.4 MB


There will be some other options that we might anticipate:

What operating system should be on the servers?    Windows 2003 Server

Do you have licences or do you want to rent from the cloud provider?   We have licences.

Do you want to rent other software? i.e. mail server, sql server etc.    No

We now have a pretty good picture of our cloud needs. Before we start getting prices, lets consider some other issues:

1. Besides cloud rental costs, what else should we consider?
2. How do we move our existing computing power to the cloud?

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Next Post: Other Cost Considerations

Additional resources:

IBM Smart Cloud

Measuring Bandwidth

We now have information about the disks, memory and CPUs. This will help with the cloud comparison, but we also need to get a handle on bandwidth. I don't have any experience with this so I googled "Measure Bandwidth and came up with NetWorx by SoftPerfect. I installed it on 4 of my servers on March 27, 2012.

I looked at the results from NetWorx and realized that it includes all network traffic both internal network and Internet. The NetWorx tool recommended installing WinPcap, which would enable the isolation of the Internet traffic.

Here are the results for sample date 3/29/12:

NetWorx Daily Report    
             Received -- Sent ------- Total
SRV01  12.5 MB      81.3 MB   93.8 MB 
SRV02  103 KB        316 KB     418 KB
SVR03  136 KB       45.9 KB     182 KB 
SRV04  924 KB       10.8 MB   11.7 MB 
             --------------------------------------------------
Total     13.6 MB     92.4 MB    106 MB

Using the FibreCloud  measuring technique (see link below) I'm going to convert these daily totals into estimated 5 minute peaks. I will be ultra conservative. I will divide the totals by 12hrs then by 12 for 5 minute intervals and multiply by 10 to get a high number. We will only pay for what we use, so this strategy is only to get a price from the provioder.

Daily total in MB		13.6	92.4	106.0
per day in bytes		14,260,633.6	96,888,422.4	111,149,056.0
divided by 12 - per hour		1,188,386.1	8,074,035.2	9,262,421.3
divided by 12 - per 5 minute		99,032.2	672,836.3	771,868.4
times 10 - estimated Max		990,321.8	6,728,362.7	7,718,684.4
5 min peak converted back to MB		0.9	6.4	7.4

Important Note: This is only a one day snapshot. The existing computing power should analyze for a longer period. If you are thinking about porting to the cloud, go ahead and set up NetWorx/WinPCap now, so you will have stats when you need them.

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Next Post: Putting the Existing Picture Together

Additional resources:

NetWorx        WinPCap    FibreCloud Internet-Bandwidth

Getting Info about Existing Computing Power

For each of the 4 servers in our example let's get the values:

1. How much disk space is available?
   
   Open "My Computer" on each server and get each disk space value.

          a. Srv01 -  C: Total 20.0    Free 3.3       D: Total 20.0   Free 8.6
          b. Srv02 -  C: Total   8.0    Free 1.0
          c. Srv03 -  C: Total 14.0    Free 2.3
          d. Srv04 -  C: Total 20.0    Free 5.0       D: Total 30.0   Free 7.0 

    2. How much disk space is used?

          a. Srv01 -  C: Used 16.7                        D: Used 11.4
          b. Srv02 -  C: Used   7.0  
          c. Srv03 -  C: Used 11.7
          d. Srv04 -  C: Used 15.0                        D: Used 23.0   

     3.  How much RAM is installed?

          Right Click on "My Computer", click Properties, General tab, Computer:

          a. Srv01 -  RAM: 2.00 GB  (2.99 GHz)
          b. Srv02 -  RAM: 2.00 GB  (2.99 GHz)  
          c. Srv03 -  RAM: 1.00 GB  (3.00 GHz)
          d. Srv04 -  RAM: 3.51 GB  (3.00 GHz)   

     4.  How many and what kind of CPU are installed?

          Right Click on "My Computer", click Properties, General tab, Computer:

          a. Srv01 -  5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
          b. Srv02 -  5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz  
          c. Srv03 -  5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
          d. Srv04 -  5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
   

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Next Post: How to Measure Bandwidth 

Additional resources:

Identify Your CPU                   Measuring Bandwidth Usage 

Converting Existing Power into Cloud Terms

In the Comparing Costs Problem post I propose that it isn't easy to compare an organization's existing computing power costs with the cost of cloud.  Using an example I came up with $500 as the monthly cost of the existing computing power that cloud would replace.  So maybe if the cloud costs less than $500, it would be wise to move.

Hosting vs. Cloud

This sounds like the old Hosting scenario. Just move all the computers to a hosting facility and pay per month. You often pay a flat fee for hosting.

Cloud differs from hosting because you only pay for what you use. Your monthly cost should vary.

Converting the Existing Environment into Cloud Terms

To communicate clearly with the Cloud provider, the following information must be collected:

For each of the 4 servers in our example:

1. How much disk space is available?
2. How much disk space is used?
3. How much RAM is installed?
4. How many and what kind of CPU are installed?

For your environment:

1.  How much Internet bandwidth is used per month?
2. Do you have special requirements that may prevent you from moving to the cloud?

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Next Post: How to Get Info about your existing Computing Power 

Additional resources:

Identify Your CPU                   Measuring Bandwidth Usage 

Comparing Costs Problem

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Overheard at 375,000 water coolers...

"Hey guys, this cloud thing is cool. All we have to do is get an account on the cloud and pay only for what we use."

Overheard in many initial partner planning meetings...

"Ok, cloud is cool. How much will it cost and how much will we save in the first year?"

Recorded on numerous sales calls...

"Yes, we have the safest, fastest and coolest cloud available. How many servers and CPU's do you need? How much memory, diskspace and bandwidth? With this information I can give you an exact price."

Overheard in many followup partner meetings...

"We don't know about CPU's and all that stuff. We've got 4 computers in the closet and a contract to keep them running. Let's table this cloud thing until we can figure this out."

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I know this senario is a little simplistic, but it points out the critical cost decision factor. As I defined in my last post, the first step in Cloud Porting is to decide to move to the cloud. Costs will be one of the first considerations in this decision process.

In the above example the cloud provider views the problem in terms of the computer resource components, which can be measured and sold. The customer views the problem in terms of computers and contracts.

Unless and until there is a easy way to relate these views to each other, there will be a barrier which will prevent a rush to the cloud.

Determining Existing "Computing Power" Costs

In my last post Computing Power was defined as the whole pile of stuff that you use to process information. It includes computers, internet fees, software and everything else. In the above senario what would we have to do to come up with a cost for the 4 computers in the closet? Here's a stab at it:

• 4 servers bought 2 years ago for $12,000 including set up 
• 1 Firewall device for $1,500
• 1 equipment maintenance contract for $2,000 per year
• 1 switch for $500
• Internet Service for $100 per month
• CRM software for $500.
• PBX software for $2,500
• Email software for $1,500
• Miscellaneous $1,000

Total Fixed Costs (Equipment and Software) = $19,500  Amortized over 5 yr = $4k
Total Annual Costs = $3,400   $3k/mo

Which Existing "Computing Power" Costs does Cloud replace

Hardware $4k/yr + Equipment Contract - $2k/yr  = $6k/yr or $500/mo


My next topic: More Calculating Existing Costs

Additional resources:

Pricing - Rackspace Cloud                   Pricing - Amazon Cloud 

Clouds seem simple so why the slow buy in?

I have been in the government information technology space for many years. When I first became aware of cloud computing, it seemed to be another hosting solution with the wrinkle of resource management. I could host my computing power in a safe place and only pay for what I use. It reminded me of the old time sharing scenarios of the 50s and 60s. Pay only for what was used. Simple.

Boy, has this idea gotten hot, "cloud computing" on Google today ... 198 million hits. The federal government is going cloud in a big way, CIO Council and FedRamp.

In 2010 I decided to jump on the bandwagon and started a cloud company. This blog is the result of what I learned about cloud from this experience. It isn't about the entrepreneurial challenges of building the company which was acquired. Much is already written about that topic. My focus is to figure out how all of us can take advantage of the cloud and to explore why we aren't moving quickly toward this exciting technology.

I'm no expert on this subject. I do have a little experience and hope that other folks will join in to kick this topic around. 

Computing Power - a definition. One of the first things that I struggled with was how to explain to everyday folks what the cloud concept was about. After wrestling with my partners and others in the field we came up with the concept of "computing power". Computing power is the pile of computers, networks, software, policies, procedures, wiring, power supplies, air conditioning and anything else that is used to process information. Your computing power may be as simple as a single PC or as complex as several acres of a hardened government facility. Both represent computing power only the size and complexity are different.

Cloud Computing - a definition. An alternative method of providing your same "computing power" from a safe, accessible and remote location.

Cloud Porting - a definition. The process of deciding to move and then moving your computing power to the cloud.

From my viewpoint cloud porting is the barrier that is slowing the adoption of the cloud today.

My next topic: The Cost Dilemma

Some other folks are addressing this subject:

Porting Apps to Amazon - Read Write Web                   Porting - Benchmark Consulting