2015: The Cloud Broker Comes of Age

Featured article by Jarid Cottrell, Senior Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton

In 2013, the cloud started to officially climb the maturity curve. Business leaders understood its value, CIOs understood how to implement it, and new companies arose focused solely on cloud environments. But as cloud environments grew in scope and scale and businesses began to implement more and more cloud models across their organization, the question of cloud management arose. So entered, cloud service brokering, i.e. a self-service platform through which companies can manage or add to their current cloud deployments.

In 2014, cloud service brokering solved its identity crisis, much the same way the cloud did in 2013. Technologists figured out what it is, how it (effectively) works and what it requires. In fact, my colleagues and I at Booz Allen even got involved – launching our own, open source cloud broker system, Project Jellyfish, in partnership with RedHat.

And as 2015 begins, I’m personally excited about the early, positive momentum for cloud brokering services. More and more customers are using brokering services to make sense of their cloud and discovering how it can be used to solve some of their thorniest problems. But that’s not all I see unfolding. There are a few particular trends that all businesses should be tracking:

The Era of Broker “Enablement”

In the early stages of cloud brokering, many organizations adopted a “DIY” approach.   They created their own brokering systems, often relying on an underlying software solution to achieve their objectives. It made sense at the time to take this approach and, in many cases; it still makes sense to start with the “DIY” model, especially when the cloud environment is nascent or relatively small. But, as cloud adoption continues to grow, many organizations are opening their eyes to the more robust potential of cloud brokering. And, in turn, they’re revealing a number of gaps in areas like organizational structure, process and even culture. Gaps that cloud broker services can help to fix.

With that context in mind, I’ve seen several organizations already take steps towards a “broker enablement” approach. They remain committed to creating the broker capability in-house, rather than completely outsourcing the function; however, they have also engaged partners, like Booz Allen Hamilton, in a consulting arrangement to access “best practice” ideas and help transform their organization, people, process and technology.

Cloud Providers Get More Engaged

At first, cloud providers were the “reluctant bride.” They saw brokering as a threat to their business and, as a result, their participation was slow to take off. To put it simply, there was friction in the marketplace.

Increasingly, however, providers are learning how to thrive in a brokered environment. This trend will accelerate in 2015, as providers retool their marketing and technology strategies towards a brokered approach. Two years ago, it was almost unthinkable that a provider would share their APIs. In 2015, ‘open’ will become an industry standard. Couple that with other steps – like the growing availability of connectors, and it will be much easier for organizations to integrate multiple cloud providers into their organization.      

Look for a Software Shakeout

In the early stages of cloud brokering, there were many different pilot efforts launched that involved different software. Overnight, some existing software applications were rebranded as “broker tools.” There were startups too, lots of them, – 50, 60, maybe more – who chased the cloud brokering opportunity.

Some of it worked. Some of it partially worked. A lot of it didn’t work. Much of the software was good for the “bottom of the stack” work associated with cloud brokering. But there were many gaps.

Now, in 2015, we’re primed for see a shakeout in the broker software space, as solutions focus less so on tackling one part of the stack and more on providing what was lacking: a real, end-to-end broker toolkit. It’s something that the market needs and it will respond favorably to software capable of connecting buyers to sellers; managing workflow issues; providing decision making support; comparing prices, and fostering collaboration.

Open Source Grows in Popularity

Cloud computing is, by nature, incredibly dynamic. Amazon Web Services, for example, rolls out a new service or feature at an incredibly fast pace. Now, imagine what happens when the number of providers, solutions and services continue to rise. Keeping up with the volume of updates could become overwhelming. It poses the question, from a brokering tool standpoint, how can you address that? How do you ensure that your brokering approach is in tune with the latest the market has to offer?

I believe that open source is the solution – in particular, the community around it. Simply put: there is strength in numbers. The open source approach to cloud brokering enables new services to quickly be incorporated into an existing cloud broker framework, because the community is able to take it, work with it and create the solution much faster than any singular team or person.

It is also why Booz Allen made its entire open source cloud broker project publicly available via Github. Called “Project Jellyfish,” the project supports smarter, friendlier cloud service management and brokering.   It does so by adding a layer of core broker-type functionality to cloud management – advanced catalog search and compare; project based workflows, collaboration dashboards, quotas and service blueprinting. Booz Allen partnered with Red Hat to pull it all together. And now it is all out there for anyone working in the cloud.

People are looking for tools that make the cloud work better: open source will make that happen. And I predict that 2015 will be the year it happens; the year that cloud service brokering comes of age in a new, open environment.

Jarid Cottrell, a Senior Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, has over 12 years of professional experience.   He is considered a thought leader and “jack of all trades”.  Jarid has worn multiple hats from executive to sales to engineer.   He has expertise in Information Technology, Open Source, Cloud Computing, Information Security and Systems Engineering.  He holds a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering and a Masters in Engineering Management.   At Booz Allen, Jarid built and leads a cloud computing practice within the firm’s Strategic Innovations Group.  This practice focuses on everything open source AND data center AND cloud.  Jarid spends his working with a first-class team creating new firm capabilities and establishing a technology partner ecosystem.   Jarid is founder of Booz Allen’s Project Jellyfish community.