<a href="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Yung.png"><img class="alignnone  wp-image-7594" title="Yung" src="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Yung-262x300.png" alt="Yung Chou of Microsoft" width="183" height="210" /></a>

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Microsoft's Yung Chou on a few cloud and virtualization related topics. For those of you not familiar with Yung, he's a Technology Evangelist on Microsoft's US Developer and Platform Evangelism team. Prior to Microsoft, he had established capacities in system programming, application development, consulting services and IT management. His recent technical focuses have been in virtualization and cloud computing with strong interests in private cloud with service-based deployment, hybrid cloud, and emerging enterprise computing architectures.

We hope you you find this insight valuable. If you have any questions or comments, leave them below for Yung to answer!

And don't forget to check out his blog: <a href="http://blogs.technet.com/b/yungchou/" target="_blank">Yung Chou on Hybrid Cloud</a>

review the questions and provide your answers at your convenience. I will then review and send back for final approval. Once I receive approval, we will publish with full attribution to you, including a head shot and link back to your blog (<a href="http://blogs.technet.com/b/yungchou/">http://blogs.technet.com/b/yungchou/</a>).

<span style="color: #0000ff;"><strong>eGroup: </strong>A company executive’s objective is to “do more with less”; how can this be achieved when collaboration and productivity requires the latest technology and applications? For example, incorporating cloud computing, which some believe is hype.</span>

<strong>AR:</strong> This is an area in which the CEO, CFO and IT management must be in agreement and have a level of trust in each other’s role. Given the CEO’s vision for the organization, IT management will design an effective technology environment to support all staff members in achieving that vision. When this IT design has been created in proper alignment with the business vision / mission, it will be very cost-effective in addition to being a performance and cost-reduction catalyst. “Doing more with less” is the natural by-product of a strategic business-aligned IT environment design.

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<ol>
	<li>What is your definition of cloud computing? And why do you believe everyone has their own, distinct definition of cloud computing?</li>
</ol>
<strong>[Yung Chou</strong>] I define cloud computing with <a href="http://aka.ms/532">the 5-3-2 Principle</a>. Which specifies that to be qualified with the term, cloud, an object must:
<ul>
	<li>Exhibit the five essential characteristics, namely a self-serving model, providing ubiquitous access, employing resource pooling, offering elasticity, and including a consumption-based analytic model</li>
	<li>Be delivered in one of the three ways: Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, or Infrastructure as a Service</li>
	<li>Be deployed to either public cloud or private cloud where I consider hybrid cloud is an extension of either of the two</li>
</ul>
<strong> </strong>

Indeed cloud computing means different things to different people. And the reason is that cloud computing encompasses the entire spectrum of IT lifecycle from hardware acquisition, infrastructure, networking, software development, production operations and maintenance, to decommission and disposing of resources. And regardless what role and responsibilities an IT professional assumes it is in the umbrella scope of cloud computing. In fact, I always say if you are an IT professional you do know something about cloud computing for sure. This issue in my view is not on understanding cloud computing from a particular point of view, the issue is the inability to connect the dots and articulate the overall vision of cloud computing relevant to a project’s priorities or an individual’s role and responsibilities due to a lack of clarity of what cloud computing is about.

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Cloud computing in layman's terms is a concept, an objective, a state, or a capability such that a business can be available on demand. In the context of IT the concept, the objective, the state, or the capability is realized with digital computing. The key here is this idea of "on demand" which is an ambitious and lofty goal for IT. On-demand in cloud computing means anytime, anywhere, any device access, which is the spirit of consumerization of IT which embraces the device of a user's choice for productivity. On-demand sets the focus on an intended user and whenever, wherever, and with whatever device the user needs to access an authorized resource, either an application, a runtime environment, or infrastructure the resource will be there, not only accessible but also ready for consumption. On-demand also implies the ability to timely increase capacities as a target market moves upward and perhaps more importantly to decrease capacity when demands subside. On-demand is a result of combining standardization of deployment, automation of operations and processes, and optimization of resource utilization while all requires meticulous capacity planning with a comprehensive system management solution.

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This always accessibility and readiness of a resource for an authorized user is the essence of cloud computing. This concept is largely embedded in the term, <a href="http://aka.ms/it">service</a>. In other words, cloud computing is to enable a business available of demand, i.e. business as a service. Frequently in a cloud computing discussion we have heard people reference software as a service, platform as a service, infrastructure as a service, IT as a service, and even everything as a service. They are essentially saying an application available on demand, a runtime environment available on demand, provisioning infrastructure on demand, IT functions available on demand, and a target delivery on demand, respectively. So my terse description of cloud computing is simply a capability to deliver business as a service or make business available on demand.

<strong> </strong>
<ol>
	<li>Can you briefly explain the 5-3-2 Principle and what it means to IT and business executives?</li>
</ol>
<strong>[Yung Chou] </strong><a href="http://aka.ms/532">The 5-3-2 Principle</a> outlines the requirements, the deliveries, and the deployments of cloud computing. For IT decision makers, a clearing understanding with set priorities of these requirements relevant to the core business is imperative. The question is really not if but how much and to what extent a business needs cloud computing in various shapes and forms. All business should and will benefit from being available on demand which is the state for cloud computing to achieve. The strategies and decisions are in principle based on where your business is now and where she needs to be, what capabilities are in place today and what else to be acquired, what  the cash flow looks like and when it can break even, etc. The cost model will be most appropriately developed by IT professionals who know not just how to run IT but to estimate the cost of the operations and processes in a traditional on-premise deployment and a target cloud computing environment.

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The 5-3-2 Principle is a modified version of <a href="http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf">NIST SP 800-145</a> which officially defines cloud computing and is a good model to start. However, in my view, SP 800-145 misses addressing an important concept, <a href="http://aka.ms/it">service</a>, which is critical for clarifying what cloud computing is about. SP 800-145 also applies inconsistent criteria in defining some of its cloud computing deployment models as I have described in my post, <a href="http://aka.ms/nist">An Inconvenience Truth of NIST Cloud Computing Definition, SP 800-145</a>.

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<ol>
	<li>Is there a difference between virtualization and cloud computing? If so, what is that difference?</li>
</ol>
<strong>[Yung Chou] </strong>Virtualization is not cloud computing and <a href="http://aka.ms/v-p1">cloud computing goes far beyond virtualization</a>. Fundamentally virtualization is not required to abide by the 5-3-2 Principle while cloud computing is. In many occasion, I ask IT professionals what virtualization means to them. And the frequent answers I have been getting are various forms of describing running multiple OS instances with the same hardware which is basically server consolidation. Few mentioned anything about a self-serving model, universal accessibility, or embedded analytics while either is an essential characteristic of cloud computing. When planning a virtualization solution, the main focus for many has been on configuring and delivering virtual machines, and not about the accessibility and readiness of a service which is the application running in and delivered by a set of deployed virtual machines. Further, <a href="http://blogs.technet.com/b/yungchou/archive/2012/04/03/a-private-cloud-is-about-shortening-go-to-market-by-delivering-itaas.aspx">cloud computing is to ultimately shorten go-to-market</a> which is why there is such a strong emphasis on the accessibility and the readiness of a target resource. While virtualization is much on the technical integrity of infrastructure which operates under the hood of cloud computing.

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<ol>
	<li>Gartner recently said in its Hype Cycle report that cloud computing has become muddled in the market as vendors are "cloud washing” and such  miscommunication could ultimately detract end users from the efficiencies cloud computing can bring. Would you agree or disagree with Gartner and why?</li>
</ol>
<strong>[Yung Chou] </strong>I agree and again in my view this is largely due to a lack of clarity in understanding what cloud computing is. If not knowing what it is, I can’t imagine how one can effectively articulate why and how it is. Cloud computing is not a product or a particular technology. It is a set of capability with which a business can be available on demand, whatever the business is from deploying a server, to developing an application or delivering flowers. Lately it is getting even more confusing when people start using the term, cloud, interchangeably with remote access, equating virtualization to private cloud,  and employing private cloud, hybrid cloud, and enterprise infrastructure as synonyms, while these term, each represents a specific set of requirements and objectives, targets various business scenarios, and addresses different business challenges. They are simply not the same.

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<ol>
	<li>Switching gears to SharePoint, can you briefly discuss how business professionals can use SharePoint for their business intelligence needs/projects?</li>
</ol>
<strong>[Yung Chou] </strong>SharePoint to information worker is just like Active Directory to system administrators. In Windows infrastructure, Active Directory is the one version of truth and the ultimate authority of all objects managed in the associated domain. Eventually anything happens in a domain, starts and ends with Active Directory since in a distributed system as most what we have today in enterprise IT, authentication, authorization, and accounting are the core services IT provides.

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Similarly SharePoint is the repository and the one version of truth of information based on documents and data stored, derived, and delivered in a corporation. When architecting Windows infrastructure, IT professionals start with a Windows domain. When architecting a BI solution, an information architect should start with a SharePoint infrastructure when there is an opportunity. BI has much to do with data warehousing and mining. At the same time, BI is also about data gathering, portability, presentation, accessibility, taxonomy, workflow, extensibility, rights management, HR/CRM/ERP integration, etc. so what to get, how to get it, validated by what, who owns it, who can process it and to be consumed by whom, what is significant and in what way, and on and on, are all in a way contributed to the realization of BI. All the above mentioned are what ultimately SharePoint is designed to delivered. So rather than trying to fit SharePoint into a business process, developing a business process with SharePoint is the fundamental concept we must appreciate. This becomes very obvious when trying to build Windows infrastructure without first planning Active Directory. It just does not work that way. SharePoint needs to be considered with the same level of respect when it comes to information management. Consolidate existing business processes and data and convert them into SharePoint, subsequently run your business and develop BI capabilities with SharePoint to maximize business values and accelerate ROI.