Thinking Out Cloud

AutoCAD in the Cloud Launches Today

Although it announced it a few weeks ago, today Autodesk is launching its cloud service, AutoCADWS, and its iOS apps (iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad) for storing, editing and sharing Autocad DWG files in the cloud.  

It's a nice follow up to my Oh, SaaS, is there anything you can't do? post from a couple of months ago. This isn't quite a true SaaS application (yet), but it shows, once again, how cloud computing can apply to a wide variety of applications and how companies are re-thinking the delivery models of their products.

At the time of me writing this post the link to the cloud service, AutoCAD WS, wasn't live yet, but according to the company it should be launched today. My wife is an interior architect and I'm sure she's going to want to play around with this new service. The iPhone and iPad apps are already available on the iTunes store (for free).

I am looking forward to speaking to some of the Autodesk executives to better understand what their plans are for the cloud, as I understand they have a lot more goodies in store.

UPDATE: The AutoCAD WS site is now live.

Shopping the Cloud: Pricing (or Apples and Oranges in the Cloud)

In Shopping the Cloud: Performance Benchmarks I listed a number of services and reports that compare cloud provider performance results, but the truth is that in computing (cloud included) you can throw money at almost any performance and scale problem. It doesn't make any sense, therefore, to talk about performance alone, you want to compare price/performance.

But here's the rub: it is becoming increasingly difficult to compare the pricing of the various cloud providers.

Problem #1: Cloud providers use non-standard, obfuscated terminology

About a year and a half ago I wrote What Are Amazon EC2 Compute Units? in which I raised the issue of how difficult it is to know what it is you are actually getting for what you are paying in the cloud. Other vendors use their own terminology, such as Heroku's Dynos. I'm not just picking on these two, everyone has their own system.

Problem #2: Cloud providers use wildly varying pricing schemes

In addition, the pricing schemes by the various vendors include different components. Take storage as the simplest example, which clearly illustrates the point. Here's a screenshot from the Rackspace Cloud Files pricing page:

 

It is fairly straightforward, but also contains many elements that are extremely difficult to project (especially for a new application), such as the Bandwidth and Request Pricing. That's OK - you have to make some assumptions. 

But here's my main point -- now compare it to Amazon S3 pricing:

Good luck with that.

Problem #3: Not all cloud offerings are created equal

To make things worse, not all cloud storage services were made equal. They have different features, different SLAs, varying levels of API richness, ease-of-use, compliance and on and on.

Problem #4: Cloud computing pricing is fluctuating rapidly

Another big problem with dealing with pricing is that the market is very dynamic and prices change rapidly. Fortunately, most of the movement right now is downwards, due to the increased competitiveness (especially in the IaaS space) and thanks to vendors benefiting from economies of scale and increased efficiency due to innovation.

Andrew Shafer from CloudScaling wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago in which he shows how Amazon pricing is constantly shrinking. Check out this graphic he created:

What to do about it?

So what do you do in such a complex landscape? There seems to be no escape from creating a test application and running it on multiple services to see where the cost comes out. Then again, that may turn out to be a very time-consuming and expensive effort that may not be worth it -- at least not initially. So you should be prepared to have to move your app across cloud providers if and when the costs become prohibitive (which I am seeing happening to more and more companies).

Hopefully, the cloud benchmark services will also start paying attention to pricing and provide a comparison of price/performance and not just performance.

Have Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure Surpassed Rackspace?

Today Zenoss released a survey it conducted about cloud computing and virtualization. It has some interesting data and they created a very nice looking Infographic with the key findings.

Here's the data point I found most interesting:

 

I have followed many cloud surveys and reports that measure cloud traction of the different providers (see for example Guy Rosen's State of the Cloud). It has consistently been the case that Amazon is ranked #1 and Rackspace #2 (which is what prompted my Rackspace: The Avis of Cloud Computing post). The Zenoss survey suggests a different story with Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure coming in at #2 and #3 respectively, pushing Rackspace to #4.

Also, GoGrid's penetration, as well as RightScale's (which is a very different animal than the other players on the list) is very impressive.

Note that the wording of the question in the survey was a bit ambiguous: "What are your cloud computing plans for 2010?". I say ambiguous because the survey was conducted Q2 2010, so probably close to the middle of the year. But in any case, it has a forward looking element to it, which gives a little indication of the trends as they are happening.

Anyway, lots of interesting info on both cloud and virtualization. Check out the full survey results (requires registration).