August 2013

White Paper

Intel’s Vision of OpenCloud Computing
Executive Overview
Cloud computing is an important evolution in IT services delivery for the enterprise
as well as for telcos, hosting companies, government agencies, and others. Somehave fully embraced cloud computing to make IT more agile, efficient, and costeffective in the delivery of services that support business growth. Others are in
the early planning stages of cloud deployments. And, while the tools, building
blocks, and best practices for the cloud are maturing, challenges to deploying
cloud solutions still remain—especially as companies look to expand from private
to public and hybrid cloud deployments.
Intel brings a comprehensive set of innovative technology, industry leadership,and expertise to help address key challenges in cloud computing adoption to
make it easier for companies to realize the full benefits of cloud more quickly.
Intel has a vision for open cloud computing that is federated, automated, andclient-aware. Realizing this vision requires a cloud infrastructure that is highly
efficient, scalable, and secure, and is built on a foundation of open, interoperable,
and multi-vendor solutions. This paper looks at Intel’s open cloud computing visionand the company’s contributions to ease adoption and enable more efficient,secure, and scalable clouds.

Contents

3		
IT Under Pressure3		
Speeding Agility, Reducing Costs, and Accelerating
Innovation via Cloud
4		
The Three Elements of Intel’s Vision of OpenCloud Computing
6		
Foundation to Enable Open Cloud Computing
7		Intel’s Role in Achieving Open Cloud Computing

IT Under Pressure
By 2016, over 3 billion connected users will drive an increase of more than 8x in mobile data traffic compared to 2012.1 By 2020, there will
be over 30 billion connected devices.2 Moreover, information is growing at 2x per year3 from the massive growth in structured data (traditional
databases) and unstructured data (e-mail, web content, videos, social media).
IT is under pressure to become much more agile and efficient, while turning this increasing variety and volume of data into actionable insights.
At the same time, data centers are often pushed to capacity, while IT resources and costs are constrained. Plus, there is a need to continuallyenhance security to keep ahead of increasingly sophisticated hackers. These challenges are driving the need for IT to quickly evolve toward amore efficient, automated, and secure infrastructure.

Speeding Agility, Reducing Costs, and Accelerating
Innovation via Cloud
Cloud computing is an evolution of IT services delivery that offersa path to optimized use and rapid deployment of resources throughsystems and solutions that are more efficient and scalable, whileproviding much greater levels of automation. Many enterprises haveembraced cloud computing, thus realizing significant benefits inagility, cost reduction, and delivering new services faster to support
business growth. Other organizations are in the planning stages forcloud deployments or still considering their plans.
Cloud infrastructure technologies and solutions are maturing, offering
software solutions and systems to more widely and easily implement
private clouds and extend into public and hybrid clouds.

From Virtualization to Cloud
For many enterprises, virtualized server infrastructure is the foundation
upon which cloud infrastructure is built. Initially, virtualization technologies allowed data centers to consolidate server infrastructure to savecost. Over time, integrating flexible resource management technologies
enabled more dynamic allocation of data center resources. This hashelped reduce costs and also increased data center flexibility andperformance. However, it’s also led to Virtual Machine (VM) sprawl,
leading to further complexity.
Cloud computing extends highly virtualized infrastructure to bringsignificant automation and new levels of scalability. Software providers
continue to expand solutions to provide robust management features
and technology optimizations for cloud deployments based upon
virtualization. Hardware vendors, too, have extended their management
tools and reliability features to include increased flexibility andresource orchestration.
Cloud deployments are different from previous IT services implementations. The key attributes that distinguish cloud computing fromtraditional IT are:

3

Intel IT Center White Paper | Intel’s Vision of Open Cloud Computing• Compute and storage functions are abstracted and offered
as services.
• Services are built on a massively scalable infrastructure.
• Services are delivered on demand through dynamic, flexibly
configurable resource pools.
• Services are easily purchased and billed by consumption.
• Resources are shared among multiple users (multi-tenancy).
• Services are accessible over the Internet or internal networkby any authenticated device.

Cloud Adoption Challenges Remain
Cloud services often rely on virtualization technologies, enabling service
portability, migration, and recovery, among other practices. Though cloudcomputing can be considered an evolutionary step from virtualized environments, cloud computing is a fundamental shift. Cloud deployments
have unique challenges, including the following:• Maintaining the stability of mission-critical applications as theenterprise transitions to cloud environments is paramount.
• Protecting and securing intellectual property, data, and privacy
requires additional attention and new tools if shared resourcesin a public cloud are to be used.
• The automation, flexibility of resource pools, and integration
across both private and public cloud infrastructure will be
imperfect as tools and standards continue to mature.
• Providing flexible and interoperable solutions is essential tosuccessful, wide-spread adoption.
• Ensuring that cloud-based applications enable user productivity,
rather than degrade it — regardless of the device usedor connectivity.

The Three Elements of Intel’s Vision of Open Cloud Computing
Cloud computing technology is maturing quickly, and many technology and solutions providers have entered the market to enable thedevelopment of private clouds for enterprise IT. Additionally, several
public cloud providers are expanding their services to better meet thedemands of the enterprise. In Intel’s numerous conversations withvendors, customers, and industry thought leaders, the company has
identified key themes that are critical to what customers seek fromcloud computing solutions.
Intel’s Vision for Open Cloud Computing focuses on helping toovercome key challenges and realize the full potential and value ofcloud computing. The three key themes are clouds that are federated,
automated, and client-aware.

Federated
Federated means communications, data, and services can move easily
within and across cloud computing infrastructures. Intel’s Vision forOpen Cloud Computing calls for a level of federation that enables
the following:• The seamless movement of workloads and data from one service
provider to another.

• Burst implementations between internal private cloud and public
cloud providers if additional capacity is needed.
• Secure and reliable data flow across vendors, partners, and clients.
The industry has evolved to the point that enterprises can move or
migrate workloads within and between their own data centers. And
solutions to connect private and public clouds, such as federatinguser identities, are emerging. But, to enable truly federated systems,
seamless interoperability across many platforms and solutions must
be a reality.
Some leading companies are starting to deploy hybrid clouds byconnecting private and public clouds, though such connectivity
requires a potentially sizeable investment to implement. However,most data center operators are not yet implementing such configurations, where data and services seamlessly and securely scale beyond
their borders, due to lack of technology maturity, financial limitations,need for organizational changes, or other reasons.
Intel’s vision for federated solutions calls for seamless, interoperable
services across disparate infrastructures that maintain required
service levels and security policies.

Intel’s Open Cloud Vision

Federated

Client-Aware

Data and services seamlessly
and securely span clouds

Secure access and optimal experience
across a range of devices

Automated

Dynamically allocates resources to manage
service level and maximize efﬁciency

4Intel IT Center White Paper | Intel’s Vision of Open Cloud Computing

AutomatedClient-Aware

Automated means that cloud computing services and resources
can be specified, located, and securely provisioned with very little — orzero — human interaction. Intel’s Vision for Open Cloud Computing calls
for automation that dynamically allocates resources and manages dataaccording to agreed-upon service levels, and optimizes the data center
for maximum resource utilization and power efficiency. This includes
automated provisioning, resource monitoring, reporting of consumption
for bill-back, and policy-based workload balancing.

Client-aware means that cloud-based applications are able to recognize
individual client device capabilities to adapt and optimize applicationdelivery securely, while enhancing the user’s experience. Intel’s Vision
for Open Cloud Computing calls for the infrastructure to sense end-point
attributes and then adjust service delivery to take advantage of thedevice’s capabilities without risk to data or user identity. These attributes include the device’s remaining battery life, policies, connectivity,
security, graphic and compute capabilities, and others.

Today, the pervasive deployment of virtualization has helped increase
efficiency through consolidation; however, as mentioned earlier, thishas also led to Virtual Machine (VM) sprawl and increased complexity.
Moreover, VMs are still generally statically provisioned rather than
deployed based on policies that automatically respond to user needs.
Finally, data center management remains manual for many IT departments. For example, patching of servers doesn’t scale reliably acrosslarge-scale installations.

When it comes to the ability to access, display, manipulate, or secure
data, clearly some devices are more capable than others. These capabilities can affect the overall delivery of cloud solutions when consideredby the data center infrastructure. For example, delivering data to berendered on a highly capable mobile platform can produce a better user
experience than rendering in the data center and transferring the visualization over a slow mobile network to the device. Additionally, there are
more location-based Internet services that can recognize user identities,
but not the security policies to which the device is expected to adhere.
Recognizing security policies on the client helps ensure policies areapplied at the device. Most Internet services, however, do not recognize
all of the key individual device capabilities, and thus are not delivering afully customized and optimized user experience.

A growing number of companies are now realizing greater agility
through automation based on solutions for policy-based VM migration, self-service portals for resource provisioning, monitoring tools
for capacity planning, and other practices. However, there remain
gaps in automation due to technology maturity, organizational
responsibilities, and other barriers.
Intel’s vision for automation calls for the infrastructure to provision,
migrate, and manage services with as little human intervention as
possible (ideally none).

Today, certain frameworks accommodate some level of data center
intelligence and scaling to adapt to the client being served, but they
are neither ubiquitous nor consistently applied. Certainly, the numberof Internet services tailoring their applications to particular client device
types such as mobile smartphone, including location-based services,
basic identity, and screen size, continues to grow. But, many Internet
services still assume the lowest common denominator device. Thus,
when a user accesses the service with something more capable, suchas a high-performance Ultrabook,™ the data center sacrifices efficiency,
while the user receives a less optimal experience. Conversely, otherservices are difficult to use on a handheld, because they were written
for a desktop or notebook.
Intel’s vision for a client-aware cloud calls for matching the service tothe capabilities of the customer’s device.

5Intel IT Center White Paper | Intel’s Vision of Open Cloud Computing

Foundation to Enable Open Cloud Computing
While great progress continues to be made, evolving the infrastructure to
realize the full potential of cloud computing continues to be non-trivial.
More progress requires cooperative development and specific focus bymany technology and infrastructure providers and customers across the
IT landscape.
Intel believes that to achieve open cloud computing, individual organizations and the IT industry as a whole need to focus on three key
areas — efficiency, scalability, and security — built on open, interoperable solutions based on industry standards.

Standards-based Open andInteroperable Solutions
To achieve open cloud computing, solutions must easily interoperate
across cloud environments based on industry standards. When multiple
providers of solutions, hardware, software, integration, or processes
act independently, vendor lock-in, poor interoperability, and lack offlexibility naturally result. These outcomes directly contradict themain benefits of cloud computing.

Efficiency, Scalability, and Security
Efficiency — The need for computing throughput continues to dramatically increase, but resources are limited. These resources include space,
power, cooling capacity, qualified IT professionals, and sufficient budgets
for infrastructure and operations. Doing more with existing or available
resources will require increased efficiency from infrastructure
and processes.
Scalability — Generally, the growth of a system inherently increases
its complexity, and this is certainly true of IT infrastructure. Systems
from different vendors typically present integration complications,and multiple architectures complicate infrastructure management.
For cloud computing environments to deliver on their promise, simplification must underlie cloud architectures and practices in order torealize the scale and performance needed for reliable and fast deliveryof IT services. Increased server utilization — especially when servers
are virtualized — raises network bandwidth requirements and drives
the need for more capable networks, which also need to be virtualized.
Software-defined networking is emerging as a potential solution to
improve network flexibility and capability.
Security — Both business risk and compliance requirements makedata security essential. In an environment with abundant traditional
security issues, cloud computing creates new challenges, because it
moves data in new ways, often outside of traditional physicalboundaries. The successful implementation of cloud computing
requires new security models and technology implementations tomeet these new challenges.

6Intel IT Center White Paper | Intel’s Vision of Open Cloud Computing

Learn More about Implementing
Private and Hybrid Clouds
From Virtualization to a Self-Service IaaS Cloud
An IT manager guide from Intel for building on virtualization and cloud computing technologies to implement
private cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), including
a frame-work that lays the foundation for eventually
moving to a hybrid model.
www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/cloud-computing/cloud-computing-virtualization-building-private-iaasguide.html

Intel’s Role in Achieving Open Cloud Computing
To meet the challenges of enabling wider cloud adoption and reducing
the risks that IT architects and managers face, Intel is active on
many fronts:• Working with leading enterprises and service providers tounderstand their requirements.
• Driving technology innovation to address inherent challenges.
• Enabling optimized solutions across a broad ecosystem.
• Engaging with standards bodies to enable open standards
focused on cloud deployments.
This holistic approach aids in simplifying the delivery of cloud services
by helping remove barriers to innovation and speeding the delivery oftechnology and solutions for more secure, efficient, and scalable clouddata centers designed to preserve IT flexibility and choice.
An example of working with leading cloud providers and enterprises
is Intel’s role as the technical advisor to the Open Data Center Alliance(ODCA). Intel also uses insight from its engagements with leading
systems and solution providers to develop reference architecturesand best practices offered through the Intel® Cloud Builders program.
And for organizations seeking to use public cloud infrastructureservices, Intel® Cloud Finder makes it easier to select providers
that meet an organization’s requirements.

Open Data Center Alliance
The ODCA is an independent organization of over 300 leading
global IT managers who amplify their collective voice by documenting
best-of-breed data center requirements for today and the future.
These requirements enable flexibility and choice. The ODCA’s mission
focuses on delivering next-generation data center and cloud requirements to meet the challenges facing IT today and tomorrow anddelivering them in an open, industry-standard, and multi-vendor
fashion. Intel responds to these requirements, and others that it
identifies through its end-user engagements, with products andtechnologies designed to address the requirements.
To learn more, visit www.opendatacenteralliance.org.

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Intel IT Center White Paper | Intel’s Vision of Open Cloud ComputingIntel® Cloud Builders
The Intel Cloud Builders program brings together leading systems andsoftware solutions vendors to provide best practices and practicalguidance on how to deploy, maintain, and optimize a cloud infrastructure based on Intel® Architecture. Intel Cloud Builders provides
the industry a central point for cloud innovation based on the IT
requirements defined by the ODCA and other IT end users. Intel Cloud
Builders publishes detailed reference architectures, success stories,
and best practices that IT can use right now to deploy and enhancetheir cloud infrastructure. Using this guidance and interaction withcloud systems and solutions providers, IT managers can improve
cloud security and efficiency, while simplifying data center
management and operations.
Learn more at www.intelcloudbuilders.com.

Intel® Cloud Finder
To better equip IT managers worldwide with the knowledge andanswers they need to take full advantage of public cloud capabilities,
Intel provides Intel Cloud Finder. Users visiting Intel Cloud Finder
are first asked questions to define the required and desired featuresof their public cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) across multiple
categories, including security, usability, quality, availability, technology,
and business. The tool then compares user responses to the services
available from a broad range of leading IaaS providers worldwide andreturns matching results. Users can learn more about each provider
and reach out to matching providers to take the next step. Intel
Cloud Finder can significantly shorten the time it takes to identify
an appropriate public cloud provider.
Learn more at www.intelcloudfinder.com.

Intel® Technologies Provide theFoundation for More Efficient, Secure,and Scalable Clouds
Intel provides leading technologies that offer a wide range of capabilities that are at the heart of more efficient, secure, and scalable cloudinfrastructure. The Intel® Xeon® processor E5 family delivers leading
efficient performance that helps IT dynamically scale to adapt tofluctuating workloads and increasing network and storage demands.4
Hardware-based security enables isolation, visibility, and control ofdynamic, virtualized workloads and data center infrastructure. It also
provides up to 10x faster5 encryption and decryption to reduce theoverhead often associated with data encryption, which enables
pervasive use of encryption to protect sensitive data.4,6
To handle significant increases in network traffic, Intel® 10 Gigabit
Ethernet (10 GbE) adapters deliver up to 2x bandwidth improvements and up to 45 percent power savings,7,8 while providing amore simplified data center infrastructure.4 Intel is also acceleratingcompanies’ migrations to flexible software-defined networks via
open solutions and reference designs. Finally, to cope with explosive
growth in data, Intel delivers significantly high-performance andpower-efficient storage via enterprise-class Intel® Solid-State Drives(Intel® SSDs) and enables efficient storage systems, such as those
based on the Intel Xeon processor E5 family that use the Intel®
Storage Acceleration Library (ISA-L).

About Cloud Delivery Models• Private – Cloud infrastructure is provisioned foruse by a single organization that comprises multiple
tenants. Private clouds may be operated on- or
off-premises and are behind the company firewall.
• Public – A cloud service provider offers services
to multiple businesses, academic institutions,
government agencies, and other organizations
with access via the Internet.
• Hybrid – Hybrid clouds combine two cloud delivery
models (for example, private and public) that remain
unique as entities but are bound together by technology that enables data and application portability.
Cloudbursting is an example of one way enterprises
use hybrid clouds to balance loads during peakdemand periods.
• Community – Cloud infrastructure is provisioned
for the exclusive use of a specific community of userorganizations with shared computing requirements
such as security, policy, and compliance.

Conclusion
Many companies are realizing benefits from cloud deployments,
though challenges in adoption still remain. For example, expanding
from private to hybrid clouds will require continued advancements
in open standards, interoperable solutions, and security.

industry to enable interoperable solutions that provide flexibility
and choice. Intel technologies are at the foundation of cloud deployments today because they provide more scalable, secure, andefficient cloud infrastructure.

Intel is working with leading enterprises, cloud service providers,and a broad range of solutions partners to identify key requirements
and enable solutions to address challenges in cloud adoption. Intel’s
Vision of Open Cloud Computing is focused on working with the

To learn more about Intel’s Vision of Open Cloud Computing,
IT best practices around cloud deployments, and how to evolve
your infrastructure to be more efficient, scalable, and secure,visit www.intel.com/cloud.

8Intel IT Center White Paper | Intel’s Vision of Open Cloud ComputingMore from the Intel® IT Center
Intel’s Vision of Open Cloud Computing is brought to you by the Intel® IT Center, Intel’s program for IT professionals. The Intel IT Centeris designed to provide straightforward, fluff-free information to help IT pros implement strategic projects on their agenda, including
virtualization, data center design, cloud, and client and infrastructure security. Visit the Intel IT Center for:• Planning guides, peer research, and solution spotlights to help you implement key projects• Real-world case studies that show how your peers have tackled the same challenges you face
• Information on how Intel’s own IT organization is implementing cloud, virtualization, security, and other strategic initiatives• Information on events where you can hear from Intel product experts as well as from Intel’s own IT professionals
Learn more at intel.com/ITCenter.

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1

Cisco Visual Networking Index, February 2013.

2

ABI Research, 2013.

3

IDC: Extracting Value from Chaos, June 2011.

4

Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel® microprocessors. Performance tests, such as SYSmark* and MobileMark*, are measured using specific computer systems,
components, software, operations, and functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases,
including the performance of that product when combined with other products.

5

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/173758.

6

Source: Testing with Oracle Database Enterprise Edition 11.2.0.2 with Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) AES-256 shows as much as a 10x speedup when inserting one million rows 30 times into an empty table on the Intel® Xeon®
processor X5680 (3.33 GHz, 36 MB RAM) using Intel® IPP routines, compared with the Intel® Xeon® processor X5560 (2.93 GHz, 36 MB RAM) without Intel IPP.

7This ROI calculator is a cost comparison for a highly virtualized solution, using multiple 1 GbE connections versus a dual-port 10 GbE implementation. In the 1 GbE solution we use two Intel® Gigabit ET Quad Port Server Adapters ineach server, in addition to two LOM connections with a total system bandwidth of 10 Gb. This is then compared with a 10 GbE solution, using one Intel® 10 Gigabit AF DA Dual Port Server Adapter and a total system bandwidth of 20 Gb.
These adapters are connected to a top-of-rack 10 GbE switch using passive direct attach twinax coax cables. Refer to http://www.event-management-online.de/LAD/calculator.aspx

8

Results based on Intel® Ethernet Server Adapter ROI tool: http://www.event-management-online.de/LAD/calculator.aspx. Bandwidth claim based on assumed configuration of ten One Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) adapters (10Gb total bandwidth)or two 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapters (20Gb total bandwidth). Power consumption figure based on comparison of Blade Networks Rackswitch G8000 and GbE adapter configuration vs. Juniper EX2500 and 10GbE adapter configuration.

		THIS PAPER IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITH NO WARRANTIES WHATSOEVER, INCLUDING ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, NONINFRINGEMENT,FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR ANY WARRANTY OTHERWISE ARISING OUT OF ANY PROPOSAL, SPECIFICATION, OR SAMPLE. INTEL DISCLAIMS ALL LIABILITY, INCLUDING LIABILITY FORINFRINGEMENT OF ANY PROPERTY RIGHTS, RELATING TO USE OF THIS INFORMATION. NO LICENSE, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, BY ESTOPPEL OR OTHERWISE, TO ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IS
GRANTED HEREIN.
* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
		Copyright © 2013 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, Ultrabook, and the Look Inside. logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.

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