Presentation from Gigaom's Structure 2014 conference, June 21-22 in San Francisco
Where is compute headed
Bryan Cantrill, CTO, Joyent
#gigaomlive
More at http://events.gigaom.com/structure-2014/
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Structure 2014 - Where is compute headed - Joyent
1.
2. WHERE IS COMPUTE HEADED IN THE
NEAR FUTURE?
Bryan Cantrill
Joyent
3. Where is compute (physically)
headed in the near future?
Bryan Cantrill
CTO
bryan@joyent.com
@bcantrill
4. History of computation as oscillation
⢠The history of computation is one of repeated oscillation between
centralization and decentralization
⢠These oscillations are driven by economics:
âEconomies-of-scale drive towards centralization
âDisruptive innovations drive towards decentralization
⢠These oscillations can also be seen as the tension between
control and freedom â with each having economic advantages
with respect to the other
5. Cloud computing as centralizing force
⢠By the 1960s, pundits foresaw an ultimate centralization: a
compute utility that would be public and multi-tenant
⢠The vision was four decades too early: it took the internet +
virtualization + commodity compute to yield cloud computing
⢠Public cloud computing is a centralizing force in that providers
realize economies-of-scale â especially with respect to human
capital and commodity hardware
⢠But is it also a decentralizing force?
6. Cloud computing as decentralizing force
⢠While the public cloud broadly is a centralizing force, inside the
enterprise, cloud computing acts as a decentralizing force
⢠The cloud presents disruptive price/performance that allows for
freedom from internal IT schedules and pricing â and from legacy
enterprise hardware providers (e.g. âblades and SANsâ)
⢠The net is reduced time-to-market for enterprise developers â
which is especially important in emerging areas like mobile...
⢠...but growth of the cloud in the enterprise has reduced level of
control â and can compromise its economic advantage
7. A heterogenous future
⢠Enterprises want to retain the economics and freedom that the
cloud represents, while reasserting the economics and control of
a centralized IT organization
⢠This points to a heterogeneous future: much enterprise compute
will remain on-premises â but the public cloud will remain critical,
driving both innovation and economics
⢠The centralization/decentralization oscillation will remain, but the
oscillations will not be in the technology itself, but rather in its
deployment: public or on-premises
8. Whither compute?
⢠There are three key determinants for public v. on-premises:
âEconomics: Rent vs. buy; OPEX vs. CAPEX
âRisk Management: Security/compliance â and also risk factors
associated with operator-as-threat
âLatency: The speed of light is a constant!
⢠These are all factors, but economics dominates: âprivate cloudâ
efforts that do not deliver public cloud economics will fail!
9. The public/on-premises disconnect
⢠There are surprisingly few stacks that run both a multi-tenant
public cloud and are available as a software product
⢠AWS doesnât (appear to) believe in an on-premises cloud
â and leading public clouds are not based on OpenStack
⢠For us at Joyent, both operating a public IaaS cloud and
shipping its orchestration software (SmartDataCenter) has
led to better engineering discipline and a superior artifact!
⢠Viz.: many of our architectural decisions came from the kiln
of unspeakable pain that is operating a public service
10. From heterogenous to hybrid?
⢠To make the leap from a heterogenous cloud to a hybrid
one, must have a common substrate that is run both on the
public cloud and on-premises
⢠Not enough to have mere âAPI compatibilityâ; for workloads
to truly straddle the cloud, gritty details like
authentication/authorization/accounting matter a great deal
⢠This implies not just technical hurdles but organizational
ones â and as a result, âtrueâ hybrid cloud computing does
not feel close at hand...
11. So where is compute headed?
⢠As it always has, economics will chart the course
⢠Public versus on-premises will not be one decision, but
many â and many large enterprises will choose both
⢠The common substrate will be elastic infrastructure and
commodity hardware; it is not a choice between cloud
computing and legacy enterprise glop!
⢠We believe that there will be more unified providers that
make available both infrastructure-as-a-service and the
software to run infrastructure-as-a-service!