James’ last question: “Is the ‘open sourceness’ of a programming stack even that important anymore?” is a good one, but orthogonal to the discussion about a LAMP/PHP cloud, in my mind.

So why has this conversation gotten me in a tizzy and forced me to write two blog posts in one week?  Well two reasons:

1. Many web based open source projects are built on the back of P languages (PHP, Perl, and Python)
2. The cloud exists to make technology easier for the masses.

Now before I go any further I will disclose that the first language I learned was PHP.  The second one was Perl.  While I know there are wars that start on listservs about what languages are better, that is not the purpose of this post, so put it out of your head and don’t say anything about how much you think PHP sucks in the comments.

Web based open source projects are built on the back of P languages

Now I could write something about this, but I like lists.  So here is a brief off the cuff list of what open source projects use P languages:

1. MediaWiki (PHP)
2. WordPress (PHP)
3. Bugzilla (Perl)
4. Drupal (PHP)
5. Plone (Python)
6. Moodle (PHP)
7. AWStats (Perl)
8. MovableType (PHP and Perl)
9. Subversion (Python and C)
10. Trac (Python)

Now, I’m not going to argue the merits of how good each of these piece of software are. Again that’s not my point.  But they are popular whether you like it or not.  And to just dismiss them would be foolish.

The cloud exists to make technology easier for the masses

Google Docs makes it easier to get to files you need to edit.  Heroku makes it easier to deploy Ruby on Rails apps.  Amazon EC2 makes it easier for you to deploy a server.  The fall out of the cloud is that technology suddenly becomes much easier to create and deploy.

So what happens when my mom wants to write her own blog.  Well, most likely she heads over to WordPress.com and creates a blog for herself.  And if she needs a little more, then she signs up for the WordPress Premium services.  But what if I want my own blog.  Well right now I have my friend hosting my stuff.  But what if I want it hosted elsewhere and I don’t want to maintain servers (since I do that all day long).  My only option right now is to do what my mom is doing, but the reality is, that’s not what I want.  I want something like Heroku but for PHP.  And if I had it, I could install any of the PHP applications listed above.

And I think this conversation is very pertinent given that Google just announced its open source learning management system written in Python and intended to be deployed in Google App Engine.  This could potentially be a big blow to Moodle who doesn’t have a cloud to turn to.

Conclusion

So yes a PHP based cloud does matter.  And yes it should be built because there are lots of people clamoring to use it (or who have already figured out a way).

And yes this blog post could be more coherent.

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I was asked to write a piece on the cloud (I know you’re shocked) in the upcoming issue of Educause Quarterly which will be dedicated to the cloud. If you’re peer reviewing for that particular journal, we will now pause so that you can close the window (the peer review process is double blind) ………………………………………………………………………………………..

Ok good. Now that they’re gone. Here is a link to a first pass at my article:

Defining Cloud Computing

Essentially its a rehash of my presentation at NERCOMP with a bit more depth and significantly fewer audience members asking questions (not that I mind questions…that was my favorite part by far. its just that i didn’t actually get to finish the presentation properly because there were so many questions). The article itself defines the cloud, and then uses videos to illustrate each of the definition’s points.

Questions, comments, and feedback are welcome.

And yes, I was trying to be funny when I used the cloud to deliver an article on the cloud (see web address of article for more details).

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My first impression is that survey respondents don’t understand what the cloud is, but that shouldn’t have been a shock to me, most people don’t know what it is.  Admittedly this lack of understanding could be due to the way the survey was structured; but even after a couple of tweaks to the order of sections (I moved Software to the front of the survey and Platforms and Infrastructure to the end), respondents were still having a hard time understanding what was what.  I’ll most likely need to do some clean up on the survey, but I think for now I have a great understanding of what is going on in Higher Education in terms of the cloud.

In the survey I tried to define the three main components of the cloud: Software-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service.  After the survey was completed, I realized that I’ll need to do a better job of defining things for the audience members in my NERCOMP presentation.  Something that I though I could spend 10 minutes on will probably need a solid 20 minutes so that everyone can be on the same page.  I think diagrams and other visual aids might really help people understand what these different components are, and how they correspond to computing they are already using.

My second impression is that institutions are very comfortable with using Software-as-a-Service.  Below is a graph showing SaaS usage among respondents.  Facebook is of course the leader in the SaaS cloud race, with Twitter and Google Docs coming in right behind them.  What I think is the most interesting though is that overall, Google has the highest share of the marketplace.

As far as PaaS and IaaS, most institutions are not using these services.  I’m hesitant to show results from these sections of the survey since so many respondents confused software for platforms or infrastructure.  Once I clean things up, I’ll provide more information.  Suffice to say though, few if any institutions are using Infrastructures or Platforms in the cloud.  Those that are are using Amazon Web Services (for infrastructure) and Google Code (for platform).

More to come later.  And thank you to everyone that took the time to take my survey.  It has been eye opening and hopefully will make me a more informed speaker.

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As a companion to this presentation. I’m doing a survey, to see what kind of things institutions are using in the cloud. Its definitely not a comprehensive list of what’s in the cloud or even what’s possible in the cloud, but my presentation is only 40 minutes.

At any rate, if you work in academia and you’re interested in/using cloud computing, please please please take my survey.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/cloud-academia

Your help will be greatly appreciated.

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The first thing I did was start with an already existing EBS AMI. Right now there aren’t too many available but they are growing.  I chose an Ubuntu 9.04 image since I’m going to install a stack on it, and I’ve already done *most* of it before on Ubuntu.

A quick note: it is possible to create an EBS AMI from an S3 AMI, but I wasn’t able to figure that out (quickly).  Although I did find a script that will do this for you: http://gist.github.com/249915.

Next, I wanted to get the Ubuntu server prepared.  I needed to:

• install mysql — http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/install-mysql-server-5-on-ubuntu/
• install ruby on rails — http://www.hackido.com/2009/04/install-ruby-rails-on-ubuntu-904-jaunty.html (up to and including step 6)
• install zlib — http://www.techsww.com/tutorials/libraries/zlib/installation/installing_zlib_on_ubuntu_linux.php
• install blacklight — http://projectblacklight.org (includes solr and a number of gem dependencies)

I did all of this.  One thing I noticed, Blacklight requires me to use non-standard ports (ie not 22 and 80).  While the server was running, I went into the AWS console and opened ports for its associated security group.  The changes took effect immediately.  I definitely liked that.

Finally, I went in to the AWS Management Console and chose “Create Image (EBS AMI)”.

Then I filled in the information including a description of my image:

and voila! EBS backed AMI.  the one caveat is:

DON’T TERMINATE THE INSTANCE UNTIL THE NEW AMI HAS FINISHED BEING CREATED

because then you’ll loose all the work that you have just done.  doh!

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To be fair, the definition of cloud computing is in flux and not always agreed upon. In the second slide, I borrowed from NIST’s working definition of cloud computing. This is the generally agreed upon definition (although some of the “finer” points are still up for debate…for a better, more entertaining discussion of this see Simon Wardley’s OSCON Presentation on YouTube)

I would love to hear any feedback you might have on this brief definition/presentation. Any comments you have will help me give a better presenation in the long run.

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1) What exactly is cloud computing
(because we should all be on the same page before talking about something)

• defining the overall concept
• discussing SaaS, Iaas, Paas (and providing examples)
• public v. private cloud
• current “trends” in cloud computing
  • the demise of the operating systems
  • creation of cloud standards

2) How can IT use it beyond outsourcing email

• testing out new software
• storage
• improving upgrade processes
• development

additionally how will this impact IT departments

• less focus on technology
• more focus on user experience
• more focus on process and project management
• increase to production timelines
• a faster pace of “academic business”

3) What are the benefits to creating an Educational Cloud

• lowering the cost of the cloud services that are currently offered
• collaboration on projects
• sharing ownership of computing resources
  • software
  • platforms
  • infrastructure

I don’t know if I can fill 50 minutes all by my lonesome.  I’d like to have a session that is more meeting and less presentation.  Maybe getting users to participate via polls.  I wonder if I could make the session a mini unconference of sorts.  Maybe start off with a definition and then ask the audience to raise their hand if they have done any of the points outlined in #2 part 1  above.  Have them come up and talk about what it is that they did and how it impacted them (using ideas in #2 part 2 as a jumping off point)  in 5 minutes or less.  I could come up with a back up plan just in case no one raises their hand.

I could then wrap things up using with a push for creating an educational cloud based on the ideas outlined in #3 above.

hmmm…thoughts…flowing…through…head…

Please provide comments or opinions on these ideas.  If you think its an AWFUL idea and that NERCOMP might explode, let me know.  Or if you think it’ll explode in a good way, let me know that too.

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In it he talks about businesses purchasing SaaS from countless vendors and essentially replacing capital expenditures with operational expenditures.

Libraries of course experienced something like that when publishing moved to the web.  We used to get physical copies of our journals, had to pay for their subscription, processing and storage.  But then publishers began selling electronic copies of their journals.  While this seemed like a great idea at first, the reality is that we are spending more money but getting fewer journals (or just getting completely screwed…depending on how you look at it).

So perhaps Hoff is right.  Perhaps if we begin using the cloud for our systems and services, we’re just trading one expenditure for another.  The question is can we keep up with that rate of expenditure and its ever increasing cost, especially when uncertain financial times roll around.

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To my disappointment most of the users that were there were brand new users or not actual users (yet).  Many were interested in why they should use Cloud Services, or what applications were best to put in the cloud.  Sadly I didn’t get many ideas from them.  The remainder (and majority) of people there were providers of cloud services, and although normally I would run away from vendors I was able to glean some great ideas that I think I can take back to academia.

Cloud Computing is a Business Model

That’s right cloud computing is a business model.  A lot of people in the Cloud Computing community are talking about Cloud as a commodity and cloud in terms of business models.  Simon Wardley had a great presentation at OSCON 2009.  If you have 14 minutes I recommend watching Simon’s presentation.  It’ll help you understand this concept.

The problem is that the leaders in cloud understand that cloud computing is a business model and that computing itself is moving toward becoming a commodity; but the people that would actually go forward and implement those systems don’t.  The positive is that in the business world they understand that saving money is good.  And since people keep talking about how the cloud can save them money, leaders decide to move applications and services to the cloud.

However when you move to academia money isn’t necessarily the driving factor, although that is less so the case these days given the state of endowments.  The truth is that campuses aren’t interested in improving themselves via a business model.  I think it may be helpful for members of campus administration to see how this business model can help them accomplish academic goals.

I’m hoping to flesh out this idea more, perhaps look into more about cloud computing as a business model and determine how it could translate to academia (and luckily I have a husband in an MBA program that can help me with this).

Cloud Computing can Improve Efficiencies

Some might argue that this is part of my first point and they would be right, but this part of the model I have fleshed out in my head, so I’m going to write on about it.

When I first began looking at the cloud I saw how it could be very useful for development purposes.  Last night I was sitting next to a woman from TnR Global.  She was speaking about how her clients are finding it easy to move from development to production in the cloud but that cloud providers have to be wary about pushing all applications into the cloud, because some just aren’t suited for the cloud.

This gave me an a-ha moment.  Currently I’m the systems administrator for my college’s learning management system, Moodle.  Let’s pretend I decided to install and test Moodle (true story).  We run a pilot for it and everyone loves it (also a true story).  So now I want to move it into production, but it can’t sit on the small server that it currently sits on.  Luckily I’ve decided to do all of this via Amazon’s EC2.  So I take my back up (which I have saved on S3) and quickly move it over to a larger server (or in Amazon language instance).  In 5 minutes I’m in production.

Now I actually just did this myself on regular old servers; I moved Moodle from an older development server to a brand new shiny server that I purchased for it and the whole process took me forever.   I had to purchase the server, receive the server, set up the server, install Moodle, blah blah blah.

Now let’s pretend its a year later and we want to upgrade to Moodle 2.0 because we hear that the grade book is better (also a true story).  With my current version of Moodle I have to take the server “down” (I don’t want people playing while I’m upgrading) and upgrade the software.  Now if Moodle were in the cloud, I could take my back up and move it over to a new EC2 instance upgrade Moodle and quickly switch the IP address from the old version of Moodle to the new version of Moodle.  No downtime, everyone’s happy.

I just had a hallway conversation with my boss and he said he wishes I had more time to work on more projects, but unfortunately I don’t.  However, if we were using the cloud I could improve my efficiency and perhaps have more time to do the work that he would like me to get to.

Academia Needs a Private Cloud

Last night Christofer Hoff (Director, Cloud & Virtualization Solutions at Cisco Systems) defined a private cloud as something where you control the policies for the cloud and where there is some sort of self service for “users” (in this case a user is a sys admin).  This of course is a dumbed down definition of something a very smart person said, but I’m just going to go with that for now.

Academia has set up consortiums to deal with cost sharing and resource sharing for years and years now.  And there are organizations that are working together on what essentially mounts to development sharing.  In fact, Educause Quarterly had an interesting article that mentions Smith College’s hosting of a Moodle Hack Docfest.  This idea of resource sharing is not new to academia, so creating a private cloud for Academia makes sense, after all aren’t servers a resource?

I met a woman from IBM who told me that IBM is thinking that colleges and universities need to use these consortiums and cost sharing organizations to create their own private cloud.

I’ve seen the need for this within my own consortium.  Recently I’ve been working on a number of projects that other libraries in my consortium are interested in.  Unfortunately they don’t have the ability to purchase servers, nor do they have the IT staff to maintain the servers even if they could afford them.  But I have the ability to.

So let’s say that I install a library research guides application (true story) and another college in my library consortium is interested in having the same application (also true story).  If we were in a private cloud, I could take my back up of the application and give it to them.  Or better yet I could create a template of the server (in Amazon land that would be an AMI) and spawn it for them.  They could then go ahead and make the changes that they would like.

The best part of the private cloud is that you have a community to draw from that is using the same systems that you are, so if that other library got into some trouble they could come to me and ask for help, which is something we in academia are already doing.

So the short of it is that I’ll probably be emailing that woman from IBM in order to get more information on private clouds and how IBM is working with educational institutions interested in them.

Conclusions

So although I left Cloud Camp feeling a bit dumb (and that’s probably because Christofer Hoff was in both sessions I attended and he’s REALLY smart), I did get some great ideas that will help me develop training and sessions for my Cloud Computing Fellowship.

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If you’re wondering where I’ve been, well I’ve been getting married and buying a house (cause I’m completely insane). And guess what my lovely blog was used in the best man’s toast (basically he said I was way smarter than my husband let on).

So rest assured folks I’m here and ready to bore you once again with the world of cloud computing. Oh and the rumor mill has it that there will be a Cloud Camp in Boston this coming July.

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