The Evolving IT Stack

It's Bill Vass back with the final installment in a series of letters I've devoted to what I'm calling the evolving IT stack. The individual IT components of this stack promise great rewards for today's enterprises, and taken together they offer enhanced hardware performance and utilization, easier integration, a more natural alignment of IT development with business processes, and improved information availability and access, as well as a greater ability to manage the challenges posed by regulatory compliance and security.

• Chip Multithreading (CMT): By offering 32 compute threads per chip, Sun's CMT-based servers offer a high-volume and low-power platform for transaction-heavy workloads. Sun was among the first to offer multiple threads and cores on a single chip — and Sun continues to blaze this trail with its 32-way chip — but AMD and Intel have both embraced multithreading and now offer two- and soon four-way chips. In the future, all vendors will embrace multithreading as the foundation for their chip architectures.
  
  Of course, different workloads demand different platforms, and in the letter devoted to selecting the right Sun server, I explained how Sun's three families of servers allow enterprises to pick the best chip and server for a specific job. Plus, in the future, virtualization technologies will automatically route the specific jobs and processes to the type of processor that can handle the workload most efficiently.
  
  
• Virtualization and Grid Technologies: With a foundation of multithreading for future compute workloads, the ability to virtualize and grid the infrastructure will become more important as a way to maximize processing power. Solaris Containers allow for multiple application environments running in a single operating system instance and virtual machine technologies permit multiple virtual operating system instances of different types to share the same hardware (server and CPUs). With the emergence of grid architectures, enterprises are also witnessing the ability to use a shared, abstracted — or said another way, virtualized — hardware architecture to deliver all IT services. Thus, the promise of 100 percent hardware utilization rates is becoming a reality.
  
  
• Open Source and Open Standards: Open systems are more secure, less expensive, and better suited to run certain enterprise workloads than proprietary software. As readers probably know, Sun is in the process of open sourcing all of its software, including the Solaris OS, Java technology, and the Sun middleware stack. For an understanding of why, consider this: The annual support costs for a two-CPU server running Red Hat are about $1,500 and for Windows Server about $1,000 — but about $500 for OpenSolaris. And, of course, this calculation excludes licensing costs.
  
  Sun is both the number one provider of open systems and the largest contributor to the open source community in both volume of code and number of products. In addition, in the operating system industry as a whole, a trend toward consolidation of the operating system, middleware, and database systems into a single, complete platform is emerging. This trend is evident in the Solaris Enterprise System, Red Hat's recent moves with JBoss, and future versions of the Microsoft Server operating systems.
  
  
• Software as a Service (SaaS): Due to its ability to deliver software as bytes over the Internet, instead of forcing enterprises to buy and install software locally as bits, worldwide spending on SaaS hit $4.2 billion in 2004. For software providers, SaaS offers dramatically faster innovation rates. For software customers, SaaS mitigates the risk and barriers to installing new software, while reducing implementation and maintenance costs. What is more, most of these services are already running on large virtual grids and on open source operating systems and middleware. And, even at enterprises that are not planning to use one of the external services, CIOs are increasingly looking at internal SaaS as a way to deliver services faster to business-unit customers.
  
  
• Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): By promoting integrated application design, SOA allows organizations to more easily align IT development with business processes and goals. And by offering the dynamic binding of Web services, SOA allows organizations to deliver composite applications at low cost and with minimal effort. The Sun Java Integration Suite helps enterprise more rapidly achieve the benefits of SOA.
  
  
• Information Lifecycle Management (ILM): Because most organizations produce vastly more data than they can store, ILM has emerged as a way to help enterprises balance the cost of storage with the need for information access. But for ILM to help enterprises deal with the challenges of data security and regulatory compliance, it needs to become imbued with identity intelligence. Identity-enabled ILM promises examines user lifecycles to take actions that make sense for the people who create, store, and access data.
  
  
• Identity Management: Identity management controls the secure access to information and it touches on vital IT components of any enterprise, including authentication, authorization, administration, and audit. Nowhere are the challenges of identity management more vivid than with the effort many companies face to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory requirements. However, with great challenges come greater opportunity, and effective identity management offers the potential for a better-managed enterprise.

Now that I have defined how the next-generation technology stack is evolving, let's see how these trends, along with IT consumerization (the movement of enterprise-class technologies like routers into the homes of everyday people) will affect enterprises and the delivery of services. Although many of the ways that this evolving IT stack lower costs and deliver efficiencies are self-evident, there are also some broader implications that need to be considered:

Implication 1: All Services Converge on the Edge
Workers will increasingly depend on a number of IT services to do their jobs. Display over IP (DoIP) will display worker desktops and Web-tops over the Internet — accessible by any device, anywhere. Voice over IP (VoIP), messaging services, and streaming video will foster real-time collaboration. Synchronization services will help ensure that everybody is always on the right page, so to speak.

All those services will "live on the edge," coordinated by an SOA that exists outside the enterprise firewall. The old castle-and-moat approach to network security will go away, and so will virtual private networks (VPNs). Private LANs will no longer exist; instead all IP end-user services will be open Internet connections. This will evolve into public or open wireless communications within the enterprise, secured with the same end-to-end encryption already used to secure mobile workforces.

Since most enterprises will be running open Internet wireless communications, there will be no reason for them to operate the wireless network long term. CIOs will reduce network costs on campuses and within buildings by simply paying "hot spot" providers to run and manage the wireless access points. This will reduce costs and give employees an account they can use anyplace. This might not be welcome news for CIOs who just finished deploying expensive VPN infrastructures and closed wireless networks to enable mobility, but it should be received warmly because the end result will be more mobility and better security.

Take a look at what is already happening at Sun: Sun has Edgemail, which allows workers to access email from a cell phone or any other device without tunneling through a VPN connection. Sun has its Sun Ray clients that serve up user desktops from the edge — outside the firewall. Sun is planning to deploy Asterisk, which can be thought of as a Skype-light phone system that resides on the edge. Sun has synchronization services that make sure all of the other services on the edge are working together to provide a consistent, unified user experience. Plus, Sun is evaluating a number of wireless hot spot providers to replace the wireless networks across its many campuses — and eventually, these hot spots will replace most wired LANs.

Implication 2: Edge Services Converge on a Grid with Identity Management Security
In the future, all edge services will converge on a shared, abstracted hardware layer. And this grid architecture will manage the processing requirements of all of the edge services. This way, enterprises can begin to realize the advantages of virtualization, including pay-per-use pricing and near-100 percent hardware utilization rates.

With edge services sharing abstracted hardware resources, the network will in effect be turned inside out. There will no longer be a need for LAN ports in an enterprise because all ports will be Internet ports. And accessing the network will be as simple as going to a Starbucks and turning on a computer is today.

This everywhere Internet will necessitate new approaches to network security. So, information and systems access will be controlled by identity management, including user privileges and role, and the device they are using. At Sun, for instance, there are six levels of authentication that depend on a mix of IDs, passwords, badges, and biometric information to govern information and systems access. The end result is a vastly more secure and more ubiquitous network.

Implication 3: Seamless Integration of Desktop and Visual Web Services
With synchronization services to help manage the visual display of a user's work environment, workers will be presented with a consistent desktop that is maintained centrally across all devices and operating systems. For instance, if a user adds a channel in their portal view, that new channel will "auto-magically" appear as an icon on their desktop and cell phone. This single, unified view into the work environment will be possible because the visual state will be saved centrally and the services — including the synchronization services themselves — will exist on the edge outside a firewall. Plus, a SOA edge grid will hold and maintain the state of the user across all operating systems and devices.

Implication 4: Seamless Operation Between Connected and Disconnected Environments
As a result of the inside-out network, users will be connected automatically to the network. And with the prevalence of synchronization services, people won't cease to work because they aren't connected. Rather, if a worker is on a plane, they'll continue to do their job as if they were connected because they will feel like they are still on the network. The materials they need will have been proxied and cached down to their device and the changes they make will be encrypted and cached back up when the network becomes available.

For the end user, the difference between a Web-top and a desktop will become moot because their work environment will be saved on the edge of the network and not as much on any local device. Why should a user be tethered to a specific device that they need to carry around, when they already use multiple phones, cars, TVs, and other devices?

Implication 5: End-to-End Authentication and Encryption of Data and Network
Since enterprises will no longer rely on a castle-and-moat approach to network security, they will have to secure the data endpoints. In other words, they will have to encrypt data in storage, in transport, and while in use. Ultimately, endpoint security will replace enterprise security, and, once again, the strength of authentication, the device, and the role of the user will govern information and systems access. Not only will this end up making networks more secure, it will also encourage worker mobility by making network availability more pervasive.

Implication 6: All Open Standards and Open Source
For all of the services to work together and with the underlying IT architecture, they will need to be based on open standards and open source projects. Open standards and open source give enterprises flexibility across vendors, and it allows vendors to participate in the virtualized future. For example, one reason why Google is so successful is that it is not tied to any one browser or operating system — Google's service works equally well on Apple, Windows, Linux, the Solaris OS, or a cell phone. Plus, Google's reliance on open standards allows the company to move forward by ensuring its service will work on the devices and operating systems of tomorrow. In the end, users prefer Gmail and Yahoo! Mail because they can access them anyplace on any device.

Implication 7: Move All Vendors and Business Systems to Grid
Instead of replacing and replicating today's environment, enterprises will increasingly move toward tomorrow's architecture — namely grid. The move to grid comes with numerous benefits, including a tangible upgrade path and a predictable pay-per-utilization cost structure. In the future, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that enterprises won't buy hardware — period. Instead, these enterprises will simply pay for grid utilization, and use the grid just like they would any other service.

Implication 8: Move to Software as a Service Running on Grid
Once upon a time, CIOs had their teams custom-build all of the components of their business systems. Over time, to curtail costs and preserve IT resources, CIOs shifted to an "off the shelf" or "vanilla" philosophy when it came to deploying business systems, and the operating mantra became "buy don't build." Today, we are moving from the "buy don't build" to a "use don't buy" philosophy.

Increasingly, software is being delivered as bytes over the Internet instead of being purchased, installed, and maintained as bits in the enterprise. The many compelling factors behind the rise of SaaS have already been discussed, but essentially organizations gain business simplification through the integration of services, along with additional cost reductions and operating efficiencies possible with SaaS on a grid architecture.

The shift to SaaS will come with challenges. There will be regulatory issues raised by SOX, HIPAA, and SAP 70. CIOs will need to confront security, access, availability, and service level issues as they engage a new kind of IT infrastructure. But, the reality is that many companies already store their data away from their enterprise, and the natural evolution of the evolving IT stack is moving towards more of the same.

Implication 9: Integrated User Views Through Liberty, Visual Web Services, and Portal Services
The promise of edge services and grid architectures is that users will be able to go to their Web-top or DoIP desktop in order to access information that is being pulled from different places and assembled in a single, stained-glass view. However, identity — and more specifically federated identity — will have to be shared among multiple vendors through technologies like SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) and others being specified by the Liberty Alliance.

With federated identity, a user who logs onto a portal won't know that the CRM content is being delivered by Salesforce.com or that the HR material is coming from Hewitt. Rather, these service will be dynamically integrated into a single view — regardless of whether that data is stored locally or on a back end server or, even, on a cell phone.

Bringing It All Back Home
Although by now it should be clear why the IT stack is evolving and why this is a good thing, some of the more profound implications bear repeating. In the not very distant future, people will be able to work anywhere and on any network — wired, wireless, or cellular. People will be able to do the same work on any device running any operating system.

Changes in information access will be adjusted on the fly given a person's role, and this role will be dynamic, as well, so privileges will change based upon how strongly a person authenticates. And all of this is more than just a promise. It is already happening today. As they say, the future is already here, it's just not yet evenly distributed.