What is the real demand of enterprise cloud computing?
I still remember that the first cloud computing conference in 2009 was still discussing the connotation and development trend of cloud computing and its influence on industrial and social development. One year later, on 20 10, the theme of the second conference fell on "cloud computing from ideal to practice"; 20 1 1 The 3rd Cloud Computing Conference opens your way to cloud computing applications ... I'm looking forward to what the main theme will be next year, but according to the undertaking situation in these three years, I guess it should be to solve the problems on the application road. Sometimes, we can't help thinking: Does cloud computing really grow as we expected, especially in the field of enterprise informatization? Eat, drink, and be merry Cloud Computing Enterprise Cloud Computing Now, whether IT is manufacturers, users, integrators or the government, it seems that they are talking about cloud computing as promised by IT. Even the conversations I overheard on the subway many times about the company's implementation of cloud strategy are hot, which can be seen. So, does this mean that cloud computing has effectively served enterprise informatization? Actually, it's not. It's far from it. Cloud computing is much more deserted in the enterprise user market! Why is there a situation of "shaving your head and carrying a load"? What are the problems of cloud computing in enterprise informatization? And in view of the CIO's greatest concern, since it is a good idea/methodology/concept, can cloud computing be applied to enterprise informatization and how to land? Why is it so hot? Internet companies, some telecom operators and equipment suppliers are keen on cloud computing, and their slogans are the loudest. Internet companies, whether domestic or foreign, have a characteristic, that is, their technical architecture and business model are all individual-oriented, and successful representative examples are Google, Facebook and Tencent. "I call their cloud computing the cloud computing of eating, drinking and having fun, that is, playing games, chatting, searching for news, and at most going to Taobao to find some tax-free bargains." Feng Cheng, general manager of Kingdee Middleware, said that technically, these services are based on unstructured and discrete information processing, and they are basically services with weak processes. Business logic is simple, data correlation is very small, and there are few complicated organizational structures among users, and there is no hierarchy, management hierarchy and reporting relationship. So at present, the application of cloud computing in eating, drinking and having fun is OK, but when it comes to enterprise informatization, these are very important issues. If it is not considered or solved, it will be difficult for cloud computing to show its talents in the field of enterprise informatization. We all have an understanding of what a CIO needs, that is, if something is not very relevant to him, or not what he wants, or can't solve my problem, I generally won't buy it or adopt it. For example, I need a hammer to knock a nail on the wall, and you hand me a pair of scissors. By the same token, even if cloud computing is hot and fashionable, it is useless if it can't help CIO solve the problems encountered in his work. Since last year, there have been countless seminars on cloud computing, including many discussions on how cloud computing can help CIO solve problems and how to apply it. But now CIOs have become more rational and pragmatic. It is not that you say yes, I will adopt it immediately, but that they pay more attention to the fit and matching relationship with the actual business. From the above analysis, we also know that cloud computing based on eating, drinking and having fun cannot be blindly copied to the field of enterprise informatization. So, what does CIO really care about, especially whether cloud computing can serve enterprise business? "CIO's job responsibilities mainly face the internal management of enterprises, with complex organizational hierarchy and high data correlation, and there are complex business process processing and business rule control between businesses." Feng took it and explained. For example, how does cloud computing make enterprise information such as ERP available in the cloud environment? It only deals with simple business processes and discrete data processing, and cannot be mapped to the business logic corresponding to complex enterprise informatization, which is the core problem that CIO thinks cloud computing is unreliable. In addition, the data processed by enterprise informatization are all structured and related applications. The biggest problem faced by large enterprises is that there are many systems with high correlation, but now the systems are isolated. How cloud computing solves this problem needs to be explained. The current Internet-based cloud computing model simply doesn't understand the core issues that CIOs care about, including Tencent, Sina and Baidu. They may be very clear about social networks and know what users want to play and how to match users, but they really don't know what enterprises care about and what their needs are. Therefore, the exploration of cloud computing in the field of enterprise informatization requires the joint efforts of all parties, rather than just capturing the superficial prosperity of cloud computing. Why can't it meet the information needs of enterprises? At present, cloud computing is mostly a business model of personal computing. What we can see for enterprise computing is the data center (IaaS/IDC), which is also a business model based on IT resources. But the essence of enterprise informatization needs to solve the problem of application complexity, an application-driven cloud computing model. Before explaining that the current cloud computing can't meet the needs of enterprise informatization, let's take a look at how SaaS/PaaS/IaaS we advocate is eclipsed. First of all, let's analyze SaaS. Its concept is earlier than cloud computing and everyone is relatively familiar with it. At present, many people blame the failure of SaaS promotion on enterprises' distrust of putting data in cloud service providers. However, just as people did not trust to deposit their money in the bank in advance, they would rather put it under their pillows, and gradually accepted the preservation and disposal of the bank. Worried about data security is a superficial phenomenon, just a sense of insecurity, and sometimes it is not necessarily reliable. Imagine that if SaaS solves such security problems, several deeper problems must be solved to make SaaS truly widely used in enterprises. The first thing to mention is personalization. The personalized demand in enterprise applications will only become stronger and stronger, but the applicability of SaaS services without expansibility and personalized customization to slightly larger enterprises is a very big problem. Second, the service migration of cloud computing. The essence of cloud computing is service computing, which is very different from selling software to enterprises as assets, that is, service continuity and service migration. How to migrate services? If the enterprise does not use this SaaS service now, what about the enterprise's data? The data belongs to the enterprise. Legally speaking, enterprises do not own the assets of SaaS software, but the data generated by SaaS is the assets of enterprises. After stopping SaaS service, how to retrieve the data assets belonging to the enterprise? If there is no SaaS application, these data are useless to you. How do you inquire and handle it? The continuation and migration of services make cloud service providers increase customer stickiness and achieve user lock-in, which is beneficial to cloud service providers, but limits users' choice. Third, the interoperability of cloud services. So far, no SaaS provider can provide all business services for enterprises, and there will be no SaaS provider in the future. This raises a question. An enterprise may need application services provided by multiple SaaS service providers. So, how to realize the interoperability between cloud services and how to solve the integration between these cloud services? If it is assumed that SaaS mode is the future development trend, there must be an operation service provider "above" SaaS service providers besides SaaS to provide services or platforms for the interconnection between clouds. Just as the network generated by the connection between networks is called the Internet, there should be a cloud between clouds. So far, there are no Internet cloud technologies, concepts and solutions. Therefore, because SaaS has not been able to provide the services that large enterprises need, the conditions for large enterprises to use SaaS are still very immature. The reason why small and medium-sized enterprises don't use it is because the small and medium-sized enterprises in China are still in an immature market mechanism, and their living conditions and market environment are very bad, which takes time. Secondly, let's look at the problem of PaaS. Now all Internet companies are transforming to the so-called open platform. After careful analysis, we can see that the open cloud computing development platform proposed by Google and Tencent is actually based on a private architecture, providing a dedicated secondary development interface for personal applications. The development language is special, and the running platform does not support the mainstream. NET or JavaEE architecture, so it can't be called real PaaS, and it can't support enterprise ERP operation and development. In essence, these so-called open platforms are not an "open" platform, but an "open" platform at best. It is basically not feasible to open to some partners to expand some new applications based on their infrastructure and develop a brand-new enterprise application system driven by business processes. Therefore, all claimed PaaS platforms have a long way to go to support enterprise applications, and the market needs a truly open PaaS platform. Finally, let's look at IaaS. IaaS is the bottom of the three levels of cloud computing. IaaS claims to save costs, including saving hardware and related investment costs, saving electricity, renting hardware servers (cheaper than buying them) and not building computer rooms. However, through analysis, it can be concluded that the purchase cost of hardware and the consumption of electricity in the enterprise informatization cost only account for a small proportion in the whole informatization investment.