What is “Cloud” Computing?…..

What is “Cloud” Computing?…..

There is a lot of confusion around “Cloud” computing. This is mainly caused by every vendor bringing out a “Cloud” product or service.. Even wikipedia descriptions is a little too confusing for my liking..  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing.

Cloud Computing breaks down into three main “Service Offerings” or “Service Pillars”. Which are Infrastructure, Platform and Application.

The following “as a Service” terms are used to describe these Service Pillars, which also describes the advantages of “Cloud” computing.

  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) [Compute and Storage]
  • Platform as a Service (PaaS)
  • Software as a Service (SaaS)

paas-vs-iaas-diag

So, the key terms to describe “Cloud” Computing is:

  • as a Service – This describes converting traditional IT to Self Service, Pay-per-use models and allot more benefits.. You can read more about the benfits of Cloud Computing in my articles filed under “Cloud” – http://virtualizationandstorage.wordpress.com/category/cloud/
  • Service Pillars – This relates to, what part of the OSI model is managed by the cloud provider and what part is consumed by the customer..
There are three (3) main types of Cloud Computing “Service Pillars”
  • Public Cloud – Service Pillar or Service Offering built for public use
  • Private Cloud – Service Pillar or Service Offering built for internal Enterprise use
  • Hybrid Cloud – combination of both Public and Private (Actually, this description is incorrect.. Hybrid Cloud is a Internal IT network connected via a L2 Bridge into a Cloud Services.. Providing a secure connection into a Cloud services over the internet or a dedicated network. Examples: Amazon AWS Direct Connectaws amazon.com/directconnect; NetScaler CloudBridge
  • “Personal Cloud” – this really isn’t a Service Pillar, its just away to describe that people will need access to their own personal applications and data within each of the service pillars. For me this is a Single Sign on Solution to connect everything seamlessly and access to personal data locally via cloud.

This IDC report explains in detail Cloud Best Practice.. :- Cloud Best Practices for Selection

Imitation Is The Best Form Of Flattery OBT 3 (I prefer Reference to my Blog !!!)

Cloud Computing – http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf

Definition of cloud computing from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), IT services that are delivered as cloud services offer:

  • A pay-as-you-go model with minimal or no initial costs
  • Usage-based pricing, so that costs are based on actual usage
  • Elasticity, so that users can dynamically consume more or less resources
  • Location independence, high availability, and fault tolerance
  • Ubiquitous access to services, where users can access services from any location using any form factor

The Economics of the AWS Cloud vs. Owned IT Infrastructure is a great article discussion the benefits of Cloud

My older post on the same – http://virtualizationandstorage.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/what-is-cloud-my-2-cents/

0 comments

  1. I think you have done an exceptional work by posting such a magnificent article. We can say that cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. I personally believe this information about cloud computing would surely help most of the people who will read this.

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