Monthly Archive for December, 2009

Cloud computing characteristics

By Olafur Ingthorsson on December 30, 2009 in Cloud Computing. 1 Comment

There is a great deal of ambiguity around cloud computing and no agreed definition still exists, although many have provided their Cloud computing question markown understanding of cloud based services and technologies.  A recent, and very readable, webtutorial report (Nov. 2009) called “A Guide For Understanding Cloud Computing” by Dr. Jim Metzler makes a clear attempt to define the  characteristics of cloud computing and its boundaries. Firstly, it answers the question of cloud computing primary objective as “to make a dramatic improvement in the cost effective elastic provisioning of IT services”. Secondly, it identifies eleven (or twelve) primary characteristics of a cloud computing solution:

  • Centralization – applications, servers, storage
  • Virtualization – including servers, storage, networks, desktops, etc
  • Automation – provisioning, troubleshooting, configuration
  • Dynamic movement of resources – such as virtual machines and storage
  • Internet reliance – extensive use of the internet for deployment and service provisioning
  • Self-service – users can select, configure and modify resources and services themselves online
  • Pay-as-you-go – user pay for consuming the service, no or minimum up-front fees
  • Simplification – fewer versions running, less IT resource complexity for organizations
  • Standardization – users gain access to standardized applications and hardware resources, fewer vendors
  • Technology convergence – enabling convergence of multiple technologies such as servers, networks, storage, etc.
  • Federation through standardization – with standardization comes the federation of disparate cloud computing infrastructures
This is an interesting list that provide a comprehensive picture of what characterizes cloud computing. Some of the characteristics are obviously more developed than others. Centralization and virtualization, for example, are already becoming mature and established technologies for enabling economical cloud computing services, while standards are largely still missing and federation of cloud computing infrastructures is still somewhat further ahead and is, of course, strongly linked to and dependent upon available standards. Still it’s a good idea to keep these in mind when you need to identify whether a service is cloud computing, or not.
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Status of the cloud computing hype!

By Olafur Ingthorsson on December 17, 2009 in Cloud Computing. 2 Comments

It seems that cloud computing is nearing the top of the hype-cycle according to “Gartner’s Hype Cycle Special Report for 2009“. Gartner claims that within the next 5 years, most enterprises will utilize cloud computing as a more economical alternative for running their IT resources, compared to on-premise resource management. Not only does this apply to migrating IT resources like network servers, databases and storage to the public cloud utilizing “Infrastructure-as-a-Service” (IaaS) services, but also private clouds and hybrid clouds. Equally, enterprises will increasingly adopt “Software-as-a-Service” (SaaS) services instead of running business applications locally. We’ve already seen successes in this direction – Salesforce CRM of course being the foremost example.

Another report from The Economist, Let It Rise – A special report on corporate IT, points to a similar direction. Public cloud providers are improving their offerings. IaaS providers like Amazon AWS and Go-Grid are continuously announcing new corporate-class services and addressing many of the security vulnerabilities associated with public cloud computing. Not only are public cloud providers improving their services, but are also adding new services extending corporate networks into the cloud through Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections or even through MPLS. A good example of the former is the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud and Verizon has started offering cloud services, termed Verizon Computing-as-a-Service (CaaS), over their private IP network (MPLS network) in selected areas.

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