Interview Series: Four Questions With … Buck Woody

Q: High-availability in cloud solutions has been a hot topic lately. When it comes to PaaS solutions like Windows Azure, what should developers and architects do to ensure that a solution remains highly available?

A: Many of the concepts here  are from the mainframe days I started with. I think the difference with distributed computing (I don’t like the term "cloud" 🙂 ), and specifically with Windows Azure is that it starts with the code. It’s literally a platform that runs code – not only is the hardware abstracted like an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas) or other VM hosting provider, but so is the operating system and even the runtime environment (such as .NET, C++ or Java). This puts the start of the problem-solving cycle at the software engineering level – and that’s new for companies.

Another interesting facet is the cost aspect of distributed computing (DC). In a DC world, changing the sorting algorithm to a better one in code can literally save thousands of cycles (and dollars) a year. We’ve always wanted to write fast, solid code, but now that effort has a very direct economic reward.

Q: Some objections to the hype around cloud computing claim that "cloud" is just a renaming of previously established paradigms (e.g. application hosting). Which aspects of Windows Azure (and cloud computing in general) do you consider to be truly novel and innovative?

A: Most computing paradigms have a computing element, storage and management, and so on. All that is still available in any DC provider, including Windows Azure. The feature in Windows Azure that is being used in new ways and sort of sets it apart is the Application Fabric. This feature opens up multiple access and authentication paradigms, has "Caching as a Service", a Service Bus component that opens up internal applications and data to DC apps, and more. I think it’s truly something that people will be impressed with when they start using it.

Another thing that is new is that with Windows Azure you can use any or all of these components separately or together. We have folks coding up apps that only have a computing function, which is called by on-premise systems when they need more capacity. Others are using only storage, and still others are using the Application Fabric as a Service Bus to transfer program results from their internal systems to partners or even other parts of their own company. And of course we have lots of full-fledged applications running all of these parts together.

Q: Enterprise customers may have (realistic or unfounded) concerns about cloud security, performance and functionality.  As of today, what scenarios would you encourage a customer to build an on-premise solution vs. one in the cloud?

A: Everyone is completely correct to be concerned about security in the cloud – or anywhere else for that matter. Security is in layers, from the data elements to the code, the facilities, procedures, lots of places. I tend not to store any private data in a DC, but rather keep the sensitive elements on-premises. Normally the architectures we help customers with involves using the Windows Azure Application Fabric to transfer either the sensitive data kept on site to the ultimate destination using encryption and secure channels, or even better, just the result the application is looking for. In one application the credit-card processing portion of a web app was retained by the company, and the rest of the code and data was stored in Azure. Credit card data was sent from the application to the internal system directly; the internal app then sent an "approved" or "not approved" to Azure.

The point is that security is something that should be a collaboration between facilities, platform provider, and customer code. I’ve got lots of information on that in my Windows Azure Learning Plan on my blog.

Q [stupid question]: I’m about to publish my 3rd book and whenever my non-technical friends or family find out, they ask the title and upon hearing it, give me a glazed look and a "oh, that’s nice" response.  I’ve decided that I should answer this question differently.  Now if friends ask what my new book is about, I tell them that it’s an erotic vampire thriller about computer programmers in Malaysia.  Working title is "Love Bytes".  If you were to write a non-technical book, what would it be about?

A: I actually am working on a fiction book. I’ve written five books on technical subjects that have been published, but fiction is another thing entirely. Here are few cool titles for fiction books by IT folks – not sure if someone hasn’t already come up with these (I’m typing this in an airplane with no web 😦 )

• Haskel and grep’l
• Little Red Hat Writing Hadoop
• Jack and the JavaBean Stalk
• The boy who cried Wolfram Alpha
• The Princess and the N-P Problem
• Peter Pan Principle