Cloud storage will fail without WAN Acceleration, so FedEx to the rescue?
WAN Acceleration needed for external Clouds, internal cloud gaining movement.
By Larry Chaffin on Sat, 06/12/10 - 3:17pm.
Amazon is working with customers to help with terabits of data that need to go to storage in their cloud by offering a service which makes no sense to me. Let’s you have terabytes of data you need to upload to Amazon’s cloud storage service. Your company does not feel like waiting the transfer to complete over hours or days, maybe weeks, you now have another option, FedEx. Amazon is allowing customers to FedEx mass storage devices to its Seattle, Virginia or Dublin locations for direct and internal upload. Amazon will charge your company $80 per physical storage device sent, plus $2.49 for each hour it takes for the data to upload.
From Amazon “AWS Import/Export accelerates moving large amounts of data into and out of AWS using portable storage devices for transport. AWS transfers your data directly onto and off of storage devices using Amazon’s high-speed internal network and bypassing the Internet. For significant data sets, AWS Import/Export is often faster than Internet transfer and more cost effective than upgrading your connectivity. AWS is not responsible for damages associated with loss or inadvertent disclosure of data; or the loss, damage, or destruction of the physical hardware. You should always retain a back-up copy of your data.”
Why would you have cloud storage if you need to use FedEx to get data to Amazon? This is one of the main reasons cloud storage needs to allow customers to put their own WAN Acceleration appliance in to help with the movement of data. Now most cloud providers are not allowing this and causing issues with sales for customers. Now customers are looking at more of an internal cloud. I have been working with more than a few worldwide customers who are looking at the internal cloud for this reason and the security of an internal cloud. They would only look at Amazon or others if they could put a WAN Acceleration appliance in their data center of which Amazon tells customer no. Plus if you already have invested in storage it makes no sense to go external at the moment.
So who is going to win and lose in the cloud?
The winner of cloud storage won’t be Amazon or other big companies but the smaller or regional company who will work with customers, allow them to use WAN Acceleration. If I had my own data center I would offer it to customers, it would be hardware based at the customer site. They could accelerate all traffic back to the cloud or the data center for storage and cloud applications. Cloud Storage vendors selling customer more bandwidth will not work and does not work, that’s why they are using FedEx now.
The losers are the customers right now, it is not good to say that but it is the truth. Customers have been sold an idea that by moving to the cloud things are so much faster and better, well they are not. Most of the time they are slower and now FedEx is coming to the rescue of Amazon. I say build your own internal cloud and use an external cloud only if you can get the same speed, storage and application performance. You will need WAN Acceleration for your external cloud, so look for help. Feel free to drop me a comment if you need ideas.
- About Putting Realism Into Your Network
Larry Chaffin Ph.D is the Chief Executive Officer/Chairman and founder of Pluto Networks, a Consulting and VAR partner specializing in WAN acceleration, VoIP, WLAN, telepresence and security.
Pluto Networks is a Riverbed reseller. Pluto was previously a Cisco reseller but in June, 2010, ended its reseller relationship with the company and is no longer a Cisco channel partner.
Pluto Networks specializes in the needs of small, large and enterprise companies by always giving them a great ROI on the products they sell. Pluto Networks has a presence in 23 countries around the world enabling all of its consultants to be virtual. Larry was a Judge at Interop for the Best of Interop Awards for 2009.
Larry has also co-authored all of the books listed below:
Managing Cisco Secure Networks, Skype Me, Practical VOIP Security, Configuring Check Point NGX VPN-1/Firewall-1,Configuring Juniper Networks NetScreen & SSG Firewalls,Essential Computer Security: Everyone's Guide to Email, Internet, and Wireless Security, How to Cheat at Microsoft Vista Administration, Microsoft Vista for IT Security Professionals, Asterisk Hacking, 2008 VoIP and Video Conferencing, Infosecurity 2008 Threat Analysis and author of Building a VOIP Network with Nortel's MS5100, along with co-authoring/ghost writing eleven other technology books for VIOP, WLAN, security and optical technologies. Larry is currently working on a follow up to Building a VoIP network with Nortel's MCS 5100 Book as well as new books on Cisco Telepresence Networks, Practical VoIP case studies and WAN Acceleration with Riverbed.
Larry also has more than 29 vendor certifications and has been working on many others. Larry has been a principal architect around the world in 22 countries for many Fortune 100 companies designing VoIP, security, wireless and optical networks. He has expanded over time also to include application acceleration. Larry is working with worldwide company now out of Asia as a Special Assistant to the CEO and CIO as they go through organizational and network changes, helping them with strategic advice from his years of experience.
Pluto Networks is a channel partner of, LifeSize, Riverbed, Call Copy, Fastsoft and Symantec.
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