Why Cloud Orchestration is the new Virtualisation

Posted on February 22, 2012 by iwatson

I spent last week out in Santa Clara at the Cloud Connect conference. It was clear that there is a dramatic transformation occurring within the maturing industry. At the exhibition stands, attendees were having in-depth discussions around the real business issues the cloud can address. Conversations are now focused on how real cloud computing, not ‘cloud washing’ is going to change business models enabling, for example, the ability to launch new products.  Business models will change and cloud computing will effect that change.

One area of particular interest was in creating a ‘Spot Market’ for cloud computing. Companies are looking to establish a market place to allow service providers to bid for managing and processing work. This type of progressive development only means good things for the industry – from innovation to cost-effective solutions.

Another observation was that VMware vSphere Hypervisor ‘dominance’ has probably peaked. Most of the organisations I had discussions with are planning or intending to reduce their usage of VMware’s hypervisor instead opting for Xen or KVM hypervisors. The driver for this is partially price, but also the realisation that the world of cloud computing is heterogeneous, not a homogenous 1990’s mainframe model.

My main conclusion from these conversations is that everyone realises they need a cloud orchestration layer to manage multiple hypervisors, storage, networks and datacentres all from a ‘single pane of glass’. And to manage and deliver a consistent and high quality service across the entire cloud environment at a sensible cost can only be possible with orchestration.

The battle we saw for virtualisation dominance over the last five years will now move to orchestration. There will be a scramble to own this space, however this time, the leaders are going to adopt an approach that meets the demands of this fast changing heterogeneous world, where new interoperability standards emerge and having monolithic strategic alliances with the industry gorilla’s will not be enough.