Transforming the Economics of IT: Step One
September 04 2009 by 
Greg Ness (Infoblox)
It was awe-inspiring to be in the same room as some of the brightest minds in the networking industry, including Dan Lynch (the founder of Interop), Vint Cerf (one of the fathers of the Internet) and Bob Grossman (the father of cloud computing). They teed up and moderated the mind-blowing first working group meeting on infrastructure 2.0 at SRI on September 3, 2009.
We all sensed that we were part of something bigger than ourselves, the evolution of today’s network so that it can unleash the power of virtualization and cloud computing. More about that at www.infra20.com.
One participant pointed out that there were several existing cloud groups/initiatives, yet none were tackling cloud from the perspective of the network. More invitation-only events are being planned. Stay tuned. Following is the agenda from our first working session.
Date: Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009
Location: Menlo Park, CA, SRI I-Bldg dining room, 333 Ravenswood Ave
Pipes and Clouds: The need for Infrastructure 2.0 (The Intercloud Challenge)
How should the existing network infrastructure (plumbing) be extended, secured, and embedded into the emerging applications (cloud
computing) to support intercloud utilization? What lessons and experience from both networking and cloud computing can be synthesized toward a scalable and satisfactorily secure solution?
Objective:
The objective of this workshop is to gather a small (25 or so) group of globally influential technologists together from which to attract an even smaller group (5-10) of technical stakeholders that can (i.e. are motivated, skilled, and available) drive toward a "reference architecture" for Infrastructure 2.0. Goal of this initial meeting will be to agree on a problem statement, "sign-up" the stakeholders who will drive things forward, and build a community of discourse to ensure the work is of practical value.
Agenda:
Short headline talks from Vint Cerf (Pipes) and Bob Grossman (Clouds), and then get right down to business. The afternoon will be a facilitated white board session to capture ideas and concepts from this group of talented technologists and thought leaders.
9am-9:30am: Vint Cerf (Google): The Intercloud Challenge: Why is this problem harder than internetworking?
9:30am-10am: Bob Grossman (Open Cloud Consortium): Some current and emerging cloud use-cases
10am-10:30am Questions for Cerf and Grossman
Break
11am: Framing the problem: White board session to arrive at a reasonable model of the problem
Lunch served
1pm-1:50pm Security considerations
2pm-2:50pm Reach ability considerations
3pm-3:50pm Scalability considerations
4pm Recap and sign-up for future activities
Posted in Dynamic Infrastructure | Virtualization | Core Network Services | Cloud Computing | Networking | Intercloud | 
12 comments
Sep 13, 2009 at 3:43 PM
I am very curious about the Cloud development in the future. What are those who are visionary leaders see immediately and medium term and finally longer term regarding Infr 2.0?
Thanks
Sep 15, 2009 at 9:15 PM
Greg, thanks for your post on this. I would love to hear some of the output from the meeting, and would be interested in helping out the working group with some of the meeting action items. I am doing some quant. research in some of the areas associated with Infra2.0, and perhaps together we can help propel forward together.
Sep 25, 2009 at 11:22 AM
You're on the bleeding edge. I mentioned this to a moderately high level US Government group and they did not know anyone who attended. Can you share the names of all those who attended so we can all "jack in" to whoever we do know?
Sep 25, 2009 at 12:01 PM
Gary:
We're working on a track for Cloud Connect and the Enterprise Cloud Summitt at Interop. Feel free to follow this blog as hte working group continues to meet.
Thx
Greg
Sep 25, 2009 at 12:04 PM
Glenn:
Thanks. I'll send you an email shortly. Would love to have a couple more users on the WG, I think. Glenn Kowack is hte Chairman and the committee who approves members also includes Dan Lynch, Vint Cerf and Stu Bailey.
In the meantime we would love for you to join our blog conversation on I2.0!
Thanks!
G
Sep 25, 2009 at 12:07 PM
Robert:
I htought about holding a contest for who could name every attendee from the first SRI session. Yet I didn't get permission to mention names but the team photo'd includes execs from Cisco, Arista, Infoblox, VMware, Citrix, Sun in addition to Steve Crocker, Vint Cerf (Google), Brent Chapman, etc. I'll ask the group at the next meeting if they're OK with a public list.
Thanks,
Greg
Sep 25, 2009 at 12:17 PM
Greg,
A good and honest start. I will send this to Glenn Tenney and Eugene Miya and a couple of others see if we cannot do a public intelligence list, but in the spirit of transparency, it is my view that anyone who does not wish to share their name needs to leave the group at once.
Am following the thread, very excited by both Open Spectrum and Bottom-Up Clouds (which John Chambers has refused three distinct times--he'd rather build centralized blade farms instead of turning the router into a router server with AON capabilities at point of creation. Ug.
Semper Fidelis,
Robert
Sep 25, 2009 at 12:53 PM
Robert:
Great point. Also, the group has just formed (and there is a tremendous level of enthusiasm) and is in the process of defining next steps, goals, etc. We already have a few newcomers and someone else might find us off mission at some point.
Thanks Robert for your thoughts.
G
Sep 25, 2009 at 1:07 PM
For those not as familiar as you with all this, see the press release on what appears to be the anti-Google Cloud Connect "pay as you go" crowd. I am building a post at www.phibetaiota.net to connect the few dots. Your photo was a huge hit with government types that are hard to skake up.
Sep 25, 2009 at 1:10 PM
Sorry, here is the list:
Berlind, David, Chief Content Officer, TechWeb/Editor Techweb.com and Host, Cloud Connect
Croll, Alistair, Principal Analyst, Bitcurrent and Conference Chair, Cloud Connect
Daniels, Russ, Vice President and CTO of Cloud Services Strategy, HP
Olesen, Marc, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Software-as-a-Service, McAfee
Rangaswami, JP, Managing Director, BT Design for BT Group
Rangaswami, MR, Co-Founder, Sand Hill Group and Host, Cloud Connect
Richardson, Bruce, Chief Research Officer, AMR Research
Srivastava, Amitabh, Senior Vice President, Microsoft Windows Azure
Staten, James, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
Telford, Ric, Vice President Cloud Services, IBM
Warrior, Padmasree, CTO, Cisco
Sep 25, 2009 at 1:20 PM
Robert:
Thanks for the link. The group is very OPEN to members from the fed space.
Greg
Sep 25, 2009 at 1:26 PM
Not meaning to post a lot here but your last comment is hugely important. I am a former fed, served on the Information Handing Committee, Advanced Processing and Analysis Steering Group, etc, and have been away from it for a while. Here's what I speculate:
1) DoD Grid is a holy mess and everything else is MUCH worse.
2) OMB gave up the M for Management in the 1970's and thinks information oversight is about regulating content. It's search for common solutions was a good effort that died because the rest of the government is nearly comatose.
3) GSA has some tremendous people, Susan Turnbull comes to mind, and it does what it can, but getting the federal government to think clearly is like trying to get cats to sing.
We are spending $75 billion a year on the 10% or so of the information we can steal (in languages we understand) while ignoring F/OSS, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT--that's my pet rock for the past 20 years) and Open Spectrum. I could cut the secret budget by two thirds tomorrow, and redirect half the savings to education and the other half to created a smart wired nation where digital access is free.
Of course I will not get that chance so I have to take my ideas to Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia, and that troubles me. I'd rather start the revolution here at home.
Even if you could get a CIO or two from the federal sector, they could not speak for nor assure anyone or anything else.
Peace.