I have been listening to the announcements from different vendors about how they “get” cloud computing and how each is the best vendor to drive it. It’s interesting to see how many of those messages are rich in “benefits” and claims about each vendor’s magnificent management tools. Yet there is little substance on why (not how) to use cloud offerings, nor on the processes you need to enable the transition from decentralized operations to a centralized, off-premises, or hybrid, model for cloud computing. However, there is already a model that has been around a long time: Despite its flaws, the IBM Systems Network Architecture (SNA) may be one of the best examples of a managed end-to-end architecture for distributed, cloud and on-premise solutions.

With SNA, everything, from the communication paths to inter-process communication, was defined and monitored in a hierarchy of physical and logical units. When something failed, it was possible to follow the track along the different components to know where the problem was. This was not an automatic process. But IBM created a resilient system and paired it with a quite extensive library that explained how to operate and keep the behemoth alive and well.

Then came the first economic shift, mini computers (DEC VAX, HP 1000 and 3000 series, IBM AS/400, for example) came to life and started to break the tyranny of the datacenter, not only by providing cheaper and simpler systems, but also by unlocking the communication paths for new and more flexible protocols.

Finally, the big revolution happened. Computing power entered the free market, running on top of a socialized network (thank you, DARPA). This revolution produced the personal computing world, with its easy-to-access resources, but also a communications model that was open to everybody.

The bad side of this accelerated change was the decline of the well-managed datacenter philosophy. The decline in itself was not a big problem. The horizontal scalability at the core, coupled with the decentralization of the middle- and lower-tier components of the architecture ina distributed network made failures on one side less costly or too far removed to justify fixing them in person. Problems were solved either by adding more hardware or applying a patch or service pack.

As more layers of the application moved to the end points, and these grew in numbers, remote management tools appeared. Their goal was mostly to continue the patching process, not to solve core issues.

Soon the problems with this approach started showing up in the form of cyber-attacks: An unmanaged system is the door to your or your company’s bank account. I should point out that social engineering attacks (like knowing a friendly and trustworthy Minister in Nigeria) are a separate issue.

In response, today, we are moving toward a regulated computing model. Resources arebeing  brought back into a managed datacenter environment, taking advantage of low cost (as compared to mainframes) hardware, an open set of communications protocols, and access interfaces between services, processes, and end users ona myriad of devices.

In other words: Welcome to the Cloud.

One attractive promise of the cloud environment is the return of the hierarchical model, which brings back end-to-end monitoring. The error is to rely on technology to make it happen, following the bad habits of the old free-for-all model.

Back in the ancient times of computing, mainframes were great, and the processes around them were even better. I suggest that we need to look back at the way we did things in those old days and adapt them to today’s needs. So the first step an organization needs to take in embracing cloud computing is simple: You need to review your existing operational procedures, policies, and regulations. Look for gaps and start building a catalog of services and processes.

A good place to start is looking into existing information—frameworks like the Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT) or the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), and the IBM Redbooks library. There is no need to apply the new operations procedures to the old architecture, but knowing the need and planning for it in preparation for the move to the cloud will result in more efficient cloud environment.

For more information, here are some links (thank you Wikipedia):

IBM Redbooks library: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/

IBM SNA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Systems_Network_Architecture

COBIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBIT

ITIL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITIL