2012 RightScale Conference NYC - Jeff Gelb, Director of Technology Strategy, Global Technology Operations, Pearson

Talk with the Experts. #RightScale

Connecting the Cloud

Jeff GelbDirector of Technology Strategy

Anthony GaroneManager of Application Administration

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What are we doing?

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Who is Pearson?• International corporation with 37,000 employees• World leader in Education and Educational Technology. • Pearson North America:

• $4 billion revenue• 20+ million users• Hundreds of millions of assessments submitted

• Ongoing transformation from publishing company to a learning company. Internet/Web/Online is a substantial portion of N.A. revenues.

• Always Learning

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Our Technology Landscape• Multiple North America Data Centers, all CoLo• All customer facing, web delivered, SaaS• Diverse Technologies:

• Java, ASP, .NET, PHP, …• Oracle, MS SQL, MySQL• IIS, Tomcat, WebLogic, Apache

• Thousands of servers, Petabytes of storage, 1.5 avg. Gb/s • Cyclical peaks – seasonal, weekly, daily

• 10+ years of 40% annual growth• Many millions invested to date, more growth coming

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The case (for|against) the Cloud

• Outgrowing our Space• Big investments still needed• Cyclical consumption• Go faster• Cost accounting• Legacy applications

Why Cloud?Why cloud?• Significant Existing Capacity• Recoup investments• Cost and growth controls• Regulatory/Legal• Discourage sprawl• Existing processes• Legacy applications

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Building a Bridge…

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What are we doing? Our goals• Cloud can be connected• At least as easy and integrated as anything else• A test-bed for automation and integration• A showcase for transformation

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What are we doing? Our Objectives:• Push-button deployment • Automated integration into our existing management tools.

• Asset management• Monitoring• Configuration• Administration• Software Deployment

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What are we doing? Our Pattern:• Integration Bus model• RightScale brokers the APIs• RightScale gives us the hooks• We own most of the logic• The tools and time invested are not cloud-only

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Why RightScale?• Cross cloud support

• Templates• Images• API (almost)

• Simple hooks• Loose binding• Easy to shift the integration points

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ToolsTool FunctionRightScale Cross cloud API

Automation hooksMule* Platform-neutral automation

orchestrationRunDeck Mass/bulk systems administrationZenoss MonitoringPuppet* Systems ConfigurationEasyCMDB Configuration/Asset Management

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Rough Edges, Limitations, Unknowns• Cloud divergence nuisances• Tool limitations and assumptions

• Tools are not always cloudified• Software bugs are out of our control• Ephemeral cloud systems, but tools assume longer lifetimes

• Our Puppet coverage is limited• Tools are emerging and changing rapidly• We have a lot of work to do

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Next StepsTechnical:• Service bus – real orchestration• Continuous integration and software deployment tools• Cover internal infrastructure and orchestration (Private cloud,

VMware, Kickstart)

Organizational:• Different groups within our company are interested and are

bringing new perspectives and requirements• Continue to transform our operations to live up to the vision• We still don’t know what we don’t know

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Questions, comments?

Feel free to get in touch

• [email protected]• [email protected]