Amazon's Shipping opportunity for Private Delivery looks like what could be done with Hybrid Cloud

Much has been discussed on Hybrid Clouds.  One way to think about the problem of what should be in Public vs. Private cloud is what would Amazon do moving from Public Shipping companies to add capacity with a private delivery fleet.  Why?  Because sometimes thinking how to solve a problem from a different perspective can show you a different way to think about the problem.

If you were going to move some of your Cloud Compute out of AWS what should you move?  The easiest or the most valuable?  Another way to think is what could you move to your Private Cloud that would give you the most savings, leaving the rest to run in AWS.

Let me use local shipping as an example.  Here in Seattle UPS, Fedex and other local contract companies deliver packages for Amazon.  If Amazon was going to add private delivery to the mix what should they add?  Those thing that are the easiest?  Those things that are the most valuable?  You could, but that doesn’t necessarily get the maximum value out of a local private delivery service.  If Amazon has 10 trucks for routes and knows the shipments coming through, why not pick those shipments that can have the most savings vs. shipping with the Public carriers?  The complexity is a good problem for compute algorithms to calculate those shipments that can be handled in a day with the at the lowest cost and the most amount of freight saved.  This difference is what ends up in Amazon’s pocket at the end of the day, and provides future negotiating leverage with the Public Carriers.

Sometimes what people are thinking goes into a public cloud vs. private is not a clear financial reason.  If you cannot run it cheaper in house, then move it back to Public, and put something else in the private cloud. 

Just something that hit me after reading the Everything Store book.

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon [Kindle Edition]

Brad Stone 
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (308 customer reviews)

Print List Price: $28.00
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IBM sells x86 Server business, and doubles capacity of Softlayer Cloud - Sounds like a Good Swap

There is all kinds of news on IBM selling its x86 Server business to Lenovo.

 

Lenovo to Buy IBM Low-End Server Business for $2.3 Billion

Chinese Computer Maker Aims to Expand Corporate-Client Business Beyond Office PCs

Updated Jan. 23, 2014 8:13 a.m. ET
 
The press release is here.  And there is not a single mention of Softlayer who in theory would be using IBM x86 Servers.
 
On Jan 17, 2014 IBM announced it would spend $1.2 bil to double its Softlayer Cloud capacity and word server does not show up.

IBM Commits $1.2 Billion to Expand Global Cloud Footprint

Builds a Massive Network of Local Cloud Hubs for Businesses Worldwide with 40 Data Centers Across Five Continents

ARMONK, N.Y. - 17 Jan 2014: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced plans to commit  over $1.2 billion to significantly expand its global cloud footprint. This investment includes a network of cloud centers designed to bring clients greater flexibility, transparency and control over how they manage their data, run their business and deploy their IT operations locally in the cloud. 

I once asked a Softlayer person if they have started running IBM servers in their Cloud environment.  His answer surprised me.  No.  We can’t run the IBM Servers.  We have fine tuned our automation to work with a particular BIOS we control and make sure is on all servers.
Check the this picture of IBM Softlayer CEO Lance Crosby.  Notice how he is back of the server rack and not in front of the servers.  I know the server vendor, but it is not appropriate to share and who knows if they have changed since I talked to the Softlayer person last summer.
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Wonder if the IBM folks got a wake-up call when they realized they couldn’t use their own servers in their cloud environment without making a lot of changes to accommodate the Softlayer BIOS and probably break a huge amount of other management tools.
 
 

Oracle gets ready to compete against AWS

I had a nice Holiday break with no landline, cell coverage, internet access, or broadcast TV from Dec 26 - Dec 31.  I was sick with a bad cold for 3 days of bed rest and I only had a kindle and saved movies to pass the time.  It was a forced withdrawal which actually was good medicine in itself. 

One of the things I missed is this post by my GigaOm friend Barb Darrow on Oracle’s intent to make 2014 a year to compete against AWS.

“Down at the infrastructure level, we intend to be price competitive with Amazon and Microsoft Azure and Rackspace. So we intend to compete aggressively in, what I will call — commodity not being a bad word — the commodity Infrastructure-as-a-Service marketplace,” Ellison told analysts on the company’s second quarter earnings call last week.

That Oracle IaaS is envisioned as a platform to run all that higher-end Oracle software goodness. The idea, Ellison continued “is to sell our customers infrastructure as a service and the same customer a highly differentiated platform as a service will let us get better margins and highly differentiated suite of enterprise applications for the cloud.”

I was chatting with an Oracle data center executive at 7x24 Exchange and we joked about how the Sun acquisition slowed Oracle’s data center expansion and how Oracle has learned the Sun data centers were not that great, and they were now expanding their existing facilities and building more.

In a research note, Nomura Securities analyst Rick Sherlund, pointed to Oracle opening up its 17th data center worldwide as proof that its building out infrastructure for this cloud push.

How much does your Cloud cost? Google adds Billing API to to support its Cloud data

It is kind of stupid to wait for your monthly AWS bill to see what you are paying.  Checking your console is one option.  Another would be if there was an API to get the data in an CSV (Excel compatible file).

Google just announced its Billing API for its cloud.

Now Get Programmatic Access to your Billing Data With the New Billing API

Posted: Monday, December 23, 2013
Tools for monitoring, analyzing and optimizing cost have become an important part of managing cloud services. But these tools are difficult to build if the usage data is only in the Google Cloud Console. We are happy to announce a solution to this problem. The Billing Export feature addresses this need, and it is available in Preview.

Once enabled, your daily Google Cloud Platform usage and cost estimates will be exported automatically to a CSV or JSON file stored in a Google Cloud Storage bucket you specify. You can then access the data via theCloud Storage API, CLI tool or Cloud Console file browser. Usage data is labelled with project Number and resource type. You have full control of who can access this data via ACLs on your Cloud Storage bucket



For those of you on AWS you can go here to figure out the Amazon billing API.

Programmatic Billing Access

Programmatic Billing Access leverages existing Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) APIs so you can build applications that reference your billing data from a CSV (comma-separated value) file stored in an Amazon S3 bucket.

Note

IAM users with access to the billing pages can set the Programmatic Billing preferences.

Here's how it works:

Programmatic Billing Access Process

  1. Log in to the Billing Preferences page.

  2. Enable CSV reporting of your billing statement.

  3. Sign up for Programmatic Billing Access by providing a bucket location for the CSV files.

  4. Set a policy on the bucket granting AWS access to publish your CSV files to the bucket at the specified location.

    Note

    The CSV files are stored in Amazon S3 at standard Amazon S3 pricing.

  5. Use an application, such as Microsoft Excel, to parse the billing data. Or, use the existing Amazon S3 API to write an application that accesses your billing data.

    AWS provides SDKs for developing applications in specific languages. For links to the complete set of AWS SDKs, see Sample Code & Libraries.

The following diagram shows how Programmatic Billing Access works.

How Programmatic Billing Access works

Comparing AWS vs. Your own hardware in a Colocation, 70% difference

Many assume AWS is the lowest cost solution.  Well it depends on what you are doing.  If you are running a consistent load it could be 70% cheaper to run your own hw in a colocation space.  GigaOm has a post on this topic.

Want to reduce your cloud costs 70 percent? Here’s how

by David Mytton

 

20 HOURS AGO

9 Comments

Data center pic
SUMMARY:

The answer will surprise you. Colocation can be a much better option than cloud for certain types of applications. Read on to see why.

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This makes the total annual cost look as follows:

serverdensitychart

You can debate the author’s findings in the comments of the post.  

Disclosure: I work for GigaOm Research as a freelance analyst in my spare time.