One of the problems with the notion of the private Cloud is the management of the link between the on-premise infrastructure and the extension out into a Cloud service provider. Making a connection between the two is not the issue. Instead it is the ability to manage it dynamically.
This is where the majority of user needs actually reside - the requirement to spin up external resources as and when required rather than commit to resource allocations over a period of time. This is the market F5 is now tipping its hat with the launch of a virtual implementation of F5’s WAN optimisation Appliance.
"What users now want is to exploit the Cloud as a dynamic extension of their own infrastructure which can mirror that infrastructure and has the same level of intelligence," said Owen Cole, F5's UK technical director. "What they need is to manage dynamic bursts into resources beyond their infrastructure."
The appliance allows users to spin up server and storage instances in external service provider resources that mirror those of the on-premise environment. This is achieved by the system's ability to extract intelligence from both the infrastructure systems and the service provider resources, coupled with the ability to manage and implement operational policies. The capabilities of the external resources can therefore be set to meet the needs of specific tasks rather than set overall at the service contract level.
The appliance also allows optimized tunnels to be created to connect the external Cloud and on-premise resources. These can be established in minutes, according to Cole, provide low-latency connectivity and allow users to transparently switch between the two environments as required. “This allows users to switch workloads to meet such requirements as compliance requirements,” he said.
This capability could therefore be used to manage the movement of services between on-premise and low-cost, off-shore Cloud resources dynamically, as the priority of a task shifts. The more common alternative at present is for users to pre-select which tasks have a low priority and can therefore be run in the Cloud.
“The system can extract a wide range of intelligence from both the on-premise and Cloud-based resources, which gives it the ability to drive management policies,” said Mark Vodemkamp, F5’s director of security product management. “This makes it possible for the appliance to manage a range of policy issues such as the white-listing of applications.”
For now F5’s primary market for the Appliance is found amongst enterprise users, though the availability of the virtual version certainly opens up the service providers as a new market to approach. The intelligence-gathering capabilities therefore opens up the possibility of becoming a primary billing system for the service providers. “It can certainly measure usage,” Vollemkamp said, “so it can easily push data into the billing system if the service provider has one.”
What is more, this is a marketplace that the company already understands as some of its existing customers are the mobile telecoms service providers and its Appliances are already pushing usage data out to their billing systems.
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