Intel is working to make cloud simpler and safer

Mallya.

Disruption is here to stay, disruption is going to be driven by the cloud, and disruption is going to force industries to think differently. Prakash Mallya, Director, Intel Datacenter Group, Asia had these messages for the audience at a recent briefing announcing a partnership between Intel and Ericsson ahead of Cloud Expo Asia in Singapore.

"Cloud is the biggest disruptor, a US$204 billion industry," Mallya said. "Today the tools and technology have reached the stage where it can definitely be an enabler."

The many advantages of software-defined infrastructure.

Intel wants to provide the best platform on cloud, and to support any kind of cloud, Mallya said, and sees that software-defined infrastructure (SDI) can accelerate the cloud industry. Intel believes that cloud is for everyone and will invest in SDI to make it easier to deploy.

Intel's take on SDI is rack scale networking, which manages infrastructure at the level of software instead of directly through hardware.Mallya noted that the benefits of SDI include cost savings, workforce efficiency, and a 10% to 20% improvement in hardware utilisation, "a massive impact on cost".

There is still work to do to simplify cloud computing, however. Intel is working to drive
more consistency in cloud support, the adoption of common standards and to optimise cloud infrastructure across different workloads, Mallya said. "We are making solid progress on all these fronts," he said.

Barriers to adoption include fragmented solution stacks, for instance. "Independent software vendors offer multiple instances of software but not all of them are cloud-aware," he pointed out. "Intel is collaborating with the ecosystem to accelerate transition to cloud."
 
To simplify stacks Intel has an OpenStack innovation centre in the US that is driving global developers to build apps around cloud-based architectures, Mallya disclosed. This is a big shift for the industry as the open source nature of OpenStack makes the cost of development cheaper.

Critical features might still be missing from cloud solutions. "Enterprises care about security and reliability. You have to have reliability built in," he said.

Intel is doing its bit to further the lack of features with a global OpenStack bug smashing initiative, Mallya said. By addressing bugs, the industry is also addressing the biggest feature gaps.

Deployment can still be complex, a challenge that SDI addresses, he added. Intel has 20 solution reference architectures that cna show the way to converting proofs of concept into commercial deployments.

"The barriers are critical to address. If you can make it simple, easy, lower cost, (cloud will see more adoption). We can definitely make that happen," he said.