Cloud Computing Expo '09: Michael Sheehan Interviewed

Michael: Hi, it’s Michael Sheehan, technology evangelist for Gogrid, and here I’m with Peter Silva, the technical marketing manager for F5 Networks. Peter: Hi Michael. Michael: How’s it going Peter? Peter: I’m doing great, how are you? Michael: Great. So we’re at the Siscon cloud computing expo. Peter: Yes you are. Michael: Down in Santa Clara, and day three, and this is actually, I think part two of our little video interview that we’ve been doing. Peter: Yup. Michael: You can see the other one at Devcentral… Peter: www, or actually, no, it’s Devcentral.F5.com. Michael: Great. So check out that video first then come back and watch this one, or… Peter: Or vice versa. Michael: Alright, so, I wanna know your impressions, I haven’t been able to see many of the sessions that were going on coz I’ve been stuck with full duty, but you’ve been in and seen a few. What are the common themes, or things that you found particularly interesting about this? Peter: So the first thing, as we may be mentioned in the last video was that the hybrid cloud seems to be emerging as the cloud of choice. That many enterprises are diving into the cloud, with thriving clouds, coz they have a little bit more control, or actually they have most control, and still a bit hesitant going to the public and there seems to be this, this fluffing up of the froth if you will to where the hybrid cloud might be, you know, what becomes the cloud of the future. A mix of on premise a mix of off premise, a mix of private, a mix of public depending on the applications that need to be delivered and the users that are accessing them. I’ve notice that many people bring up security as a top concern, and it’s in all the surveys, you guys have seen the surveys and everybody list security as one. One of the things I found here is that a lot of the vendors are trying to dispel those myths that there certainly are concerns, particularly with compliance, particularly with regulations, but that there are ways to solve it. One of the presentations talked about you know, if it's architected right, just with anything. If you do it right, then, you will be okay, you will be secure. Another interesting thing I found is, is this idea vendors baking security into the image itself. You know, where customers, you get the image and you start working on it, but they the customers still needs to worry about all the security aspects, whether the codes being lock down and ports being close and those sorts of things where vendors are now baking in their best practices of security into the image before it gets set up, before it get to set up to the cloud for deployment, yeah. Michael: Interesting. Yeah. So, obviously F5 and Gogrid we have a great relationship, we always have, point to the F5 logo in the low balance… Peter: Got the cool Gogrid hat. Michael: That’s right. That’s right. So, you know, this is, it’s a really great partnership, I don’t know if you wanna talk about some of the other things that Gogrid or F5 users don’t know about and we talked about the ability of tunneling. Peter: Tunneling, yes. Well, one of the cool things, if you had, if you guys had realize, you know, the big piece are in a strategic control point, the data center and we actually have like 9 of the top 10 cloud providers as customers, so, we are enabling the cloud. But one of the cool things with your deployment, having the big IPs there at the facility, is our least most recent release of version 10, we have this feature called I sessions, and they are secured encrypted tunnels that you can build form big IP to big IP. Establish a secure connection between those devices and so customers who are on the Gogrid platform and might have a big IP in house, they can essentially securely send their data to Gogrid and not worry about eavesdropping or hacking or listening in and any of those, those concerns that we previously talked about. The security concerns of data in transit or data in rest are going back and forth from the enterprise to the data center. Michael: Right, so cloud bursting is total reality easy to do. Peter: Yup. Michael: Yeah, well, that’s great. So any other thoughts about the expo or the direction maybe you see in 2010 from cloud computing anything like that. Peter: So right it was, it’s been hype over the last couple of years, and I think… Michael: We’re still defining what it is. Peter: Yeah. Right, many people, in fact, we just did a survey couple of months ago that, you know, had a definition and number of people answering questions and, you know, kinda dissolve up into a working definition, although we still hear people, you know, kinda saying, this is our definition of. This is the, these guys definition of. Michael: What’s gonna go into Webster’s, right. Peter: Yeah, right, right. Well, the standards, that’s probably, we know, ultimately where it needs to be. But I think it’s here to stay now, I think that’s really, you know, where before, virtualization or that, that idea of virtualization was kinda like, you know, this hot topic and it was kinda the maybe the precursor, but if you even go back further there’s this so stuff and the ASP’s even before that. I think it’s just the gradual maturity of a technology that starts out in bits and pieces and then, over time, you know, finally comes together into a viable solution once all of those fears get resolved. Michael: I mean, it’s move from, obviously a buzz word to, you know, and I’m not sure if it’s tehnology or if it’s an IT practice, I think people are still trying to figure out which it really is. Peter: I think, I think it ultimately is just another option for IT and other option for the CIO to the CTO to deploy their services. I think, that’s what it really comes down to, it’s, we can do it in house, we could do it at a hosting provider on searcher. We can do it at an old exodus data center, you know, I use to work for exodus, that’s why I have a little fond affection for that stuff. Where today the cloud has just becomes, it’s another option and again, depending on the application, depending on your users, depending how you wanna do your captex, outdex, budgeting, you know, all those sorts of things, it’s just becomes another option. It does though eliminate a barrier, say, for a lot of smaller business, the SMBs who might not have that initial capital to build at a cage with their own infrastructure, their own hardware, buying licenses, buying software, I think it removes a barrier of entry for a lot of the SMBs so then be able to deploy applications on line. Michael: And innovate. Peter: And innovate. Exactly. Michael: It’s gonna really drive innovation. Peter: Absolutely. Yeah. Michael: Great. Well, thank you Peter, where can we find you? Peter: So, you can find F5 at www.F5.com and also on twitter @ psilvas, P-S-I-L-V-A-S. Michael: Great. Peter: Or at F5networks to., so either way. Michael: You all have lots of twitters. Peter: Yeah. We’re actually talking about nomenclature yesterday. That will be another video blog. Michael: Great, so, I’m Michael Sheehan, the technology evangelist for Gogrid. You could find Gogrid at www.GoGrid.com and you can follow me on twitter as @hightechdad and Gogrid is @Gogrid. Thanks a lot. Peter: Thank you.