This latest blog series comes out of an Information Week article Mark Teter (ASG CTO) wrote and that was published in November of 2009. Given all the chatter about cloud computing, we think it’s appropriate to revisit what Mark feels are 6 Myths of Cloud Computing.
Cloud computing is the latest rage
When it comes to technology these days, the cloud is the place to be. Cloud computing has emerged as a hot trend, right alongside virtualization and service-oriented architecture (SOA). Vendors are racing to cash in.
As a result the market misinformation abounds, creating confusion among organizations that might otherwise benefit from the new technology. And as with any emerging technology, much remains in flux. Standards are still evolving, prices and pricing models vary widely, and best practices are just being identified.
In the meantime, a number of myths already are circulating about cloud computing. This paper provides an effective definition of cloud computing and corrects six of the most pervasive myths.
Cloud computing defined
Cloud computing is a convergence of high performance computing architectures, Web 2.0 data models, and enterprise-scale computing. Think about it as the next phase of service-oriented IT. With cloud computing you are accessing and running IT services, but the services could be somewhere beyond the corporate firewall.
Cloud computing enables you to deploy applications, systems, and IT resources as services that reside somewhere in the cloud—the global connected network. It allows you to use the applications, systems, and IT resources of other organizations when you need them.
Cloud services allow you to scale your IT resources quickly and endlessly. If you suddenly need to process more data you can just add more CPUs. If you need to store more data beyond your own disk capacity, no problem; just grab additional storage capacity from the cloud. When peak periods have passed and you need less IT resources, you can just as quickly and easily scale down.
Finally, cloud computing isn’t free. There is a cost to cloud resources, which we will take up later. The resources, however, are there for the asking.
Six cloud computing myths today:
Myth 1—There is only one way to do cloud computing
Some vendors might like you to believe this. It is not true. At this point there are at least four general types of cloud computing and more are likely to follow:
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)—includes servers, networks, storage, management, and reporting. The big name here is Amazon with its EC2 offering, but it is not the only player.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)—addresses the needs of application development and testing by providing building blocks, enforcing consistent standards, and facilitating testing. The big player here is Google’s App Engine with more coming.
- Software as a Service (SaaS)—delivers packaged applications configured by each customer that run as a hosted service. The big names here are Google Apps and Salesforce.com although there are hundreds of others and more arriving seemingly every week.
- Storage as a Service (StaaS)—similar to IaaS but focused on storage delivered as a hosted service. It includes primary, secondary, and archival storage as well as backup and disaster recovery. The big players include Amazon S3, Nirvanix, and Rackspace. Again, new players arrive monthly.
Together these types of cloud offerings form what can be called “IT as a service.” There is a type of cloud computing for almost every need.
Come back and visit in a couple of days and we’ll explore 2 more cloud computing myths. If you have some cloud computing myths of your own, please share them with us and our readers.
