Cloud microservices make their play

Mobile device security: A new frontier for hackers

By G C Network | February 1, 2015

Recent security breaches have heightened our awareness of cybersecurity issues. The hack and other security breaches have resulted in unprecedented damages. However, the majority of mobile device users have yet to be sensitized…

Learn How To Buy Cloud From GovLoop & ViON

By G C Network | January 28, 2015

“Government IT managers must accept that cloud computing services are services, not the purchases of technology. This usually represents a fundamental change in how technology is acquired and managed. Since…

A VETS 360 BENEFIT – LATINO FILM INDUSTRY POST OSCAR PARTY

By G C Network | January 21, 2015

   GUESS WHO SUPPORTS VETS 360? You can support them too at the: THE OFFICIAL LATINO FILM INDUSTRY POST OSCAR PARTY The Veterans 360 mission is to support our young combat…

South Asia’s Biggest Tech Event – “Digital World 2015”

By G C Network | January 19, 2015

 I am proud and honored to announce that I have been added as a speaker at SouthAsia’s biggest tech event “Digital World 2015” , 9th – 12th February, 2015 at…

Fear Hackers? First invest in an IT security culture change

By G C Network | January 14, 2015

by Kevin L.Jackson  With all the news these days about cyberterrorism and hacking the cloud may seem like the last place you would want to put your precious information. Pew…

CloudCamp Bangladesh In Dhaka! – February 11, 2015

By G C Network | January 13, 2015

Did you know that….. Goldman Sachs recognized Bangladesh as one of the Next Eleven (N-11) – a list of eleven countries having strong potential for becoming the world’s largest economies…

Agile is not the absence of ITIL!

By G C Network | January 12, 2015

 by Jodi Kohut ITIL (formerlyknown as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library) has been the best management practices framework of choice for world class IT Operations organizations.  The 5 stage framework:…

Cloud Security: Understanding the Cloud Computing Threat Landscape

By G C Network | January 10, 2015

In the last two years, IT security breaches have hit the White House, the State Department, the top federal intelligence agency, the largest American bank, the top hospital operator, energy…

Federal Cloud Computing Summit on January 14-15, Washington, DC

By G C Network | January 9, 2015

The Federal Cloud Computing Summit will be held on January 14-15, 2015 at the Marriott Metro Center in Washington, D.C. (Complimentary government and academic registration) This educational symposium will feature cloud computing…

CONGRATULATIONS! Inaugural Cloud Computing Class at Mira Costa College Graduates!!

By G C Network | January 8, 2015

Anthony Dorrah, Jose Chapman, Mike Chatelain,  Lisa Heiden, Ginelle Johnson, Robert Minson, Alfredo Morales  We are so proud of the success of out first cloud computing training class.  This group…

 by Kevin L. Jackson

Cloud computing seems destined to be the way enterprises will use information technology. The drastic cost reductions and impressive operational improvements make the transition an unstoppable trend. The “What is cloud computing?” question now, however, seems to be morphing into “Where is cloud computing going?”

While software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers see their market rocketing upward as the easiest and quickest path for cloud adoption, infrastructure-as-a-service providers are suffering as their high-capital-cost commodity business transitions to a profit margin race to the bottom. This unsettling paradox, driven by increased competition between major infrastructure players, portends a near-term shakeout as smaller players either fail, exit or get gobbled up.

Cloud services brokerage, still struggling to be even recognized as a real market, is being seriously threatened by open-source approaches from giants like Booz Allen Hamilton’s Jellyfish and the European Commission-funded CompatibleOne open-source broker. So what about platform-as-a-service? Seen by some as the most profitable segment, this also seems to be where most of the confusion resides. Unfortunately PaaS is still struggling to deliver on the promise of universal software interoperability. So what’s next? With all due deference to Mr. McGuire in “The Graduate,” two words: microservice architecture.

Microservice architecture, or simply microservices, is a new software development method that is, for many developers, rapidly becoming a preferred way of creating enterprise applications. Because of its scalability, this architectural method is considered ideal when there is a need to enable support for a range of platforms and devices — spanning web, mobile, the “Internet-of-Things,” and wearables.

Although no standard, formal definition of microservices exists, it is generally characterized as a method of developing software applications that uses a suite of independently deployable, small, modular services in which each service runs a unique process and communicates through a well-defined, lightweight mechanism. How the services communicate with each other depends on your application’s requirements, but many use HTTP/REST with JSON or Protobuf.
Microservices architecture contrasts with the traditional monolithic development styles in that the latter approach is always built as a single, autonomous unit. In a client-server model, the server-side application is a monolith that handles the HTTP requests, executes logic, and retrieves/updates the data in the underlying database. The challenge with this approach is that all change cycles usually end up being tied to one another. Microservices are also better aligned with more modern agile software development approaches.

Dell, traditionally an infrastructure company, is even noticing the importance of this trend. On this, the observation of James Thomason, CTO of Dell Cloud Marketplace, is of note:

Already, Docker (and others) are working on various new forms of service discovery, in order to solve the infrastructure dependency injection problem, and consequently the “awareness” of dependencies between application components on different servers and infrastructure.

The recent love affair with infrastructure containers like Docker and VMware’s surprising investment in Linux containers through the release of Photon has now opened the door for a rapid adoption of microservices and the isolation of containers to one process or service.

This containerization of single services or processes makes it very simple to manage and update these services. Therefore, it’s not surprising that the emergence of frameworks for managing more complex scenarios will be next. Open-source projects like Kubernetes, Maestro-ng and Mesos are now springing up to answer this need. Stay tuned.

(This post was written as part of the Dell Insight Partners program, which provides news and analysis about the evolving world of tech. For more on these topics, visit Dell’s thought leadership site PowerMore. Dell sponsored this article, but the opinions are my own and don’t necessarily represent Dell’s positions or strategies.)

Cloud Musings

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS – © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2015)

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson
Posted in

G C Network