Core fundamentals of cloud computing
Interesting article from James Staten at ZDnet.
Even though he states that Cloud Computing definitions and assertions have become more complicated and confusing, I have to agree with some of his fundamental assertions..
There are three core fundamentals to cloud computing which distinguish it from traditional IT and other Internet services that bring forth its different business value:
A standardized IT capability or service – this is a provided service, software, or infrastructure that is vended to each client exactly the same way, over and over. There’s no customizing the service for each customer. The economies of scale of cloud computing come through rote, repeatability. Sure, there may be choices of what you can provision and the means for lightweight customization atop the service being provided, but if the service provider has to custom configure it each time, the repeatability is diminished and therefore it’s not cloud computing.
Pay per use or metered consumption. If you have to sign a 12-month contract for the service, it’s not cloud computing. If the cost of the service stays the same no matter how much or little of it you consume, it’s not cloud computing. What differentiates cloud computing is its elasticity and your ability to match the cost of the service to your consumption. This distinction is critical as it creates new value for business services and enables new business models that simply weren’t possible before. Cloud isn’t replacing capital expense with operating expense as many cloudwashers would like you to think. It’s about replacing cap ex with flexible op ex.
Self-service deployment. Anyone can put a web page in front of their service and enable a “Deploy” button. That’s not self-service. The value of cloud computing is immediate customer productivity – provisioning the service to the customer in less than 15 minutes — not immediate payment followed by the usual manual service deployment. It also implies that the customer can take advantage of the service themselves, meaning the service is intuitive and has clearly defined functionality.
The implication of this fundamental means more for the service provider than the customer as this implies that service provisioning must be fully automated. And if you are going to allow auto-provisioning, you’d better have a lot of operational procedures standardized and automated as well so that service management is as efficient as possible. For the consumer it means the service is “what you see is what you get.” Take it or leave it.
Here are some related posts:
Category: Cool Stuff, Resources, Strategy, Tools
