Thursday 27 May 2010

The real arguments for Cloud Computing

As more vendors dive into the cloud computing market, every possible claim regarding the supposed benefits of moving to a cloud-based service is being made.

I ran across an article titled ” Why Cloud-based Monitoring is more reliable and secure than Nagios.

” The auth0r, who represented a cloud-based network monitoring company, contended that the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model offered by his company was better for companies than Nagios and other open source products.

The question is not Cloud Computing vs. Open Source. In fact, there are open source SaaS providers like MindTouch out there. If considering a product like Nagios, a better comparison would be open source vs. commercial. In many cases, cost is the determining factor for companies to look to open source technologies. Other considerations include flexibility and security. [cloud-computing]

The more relevant comparison would be hosting and managing a network monitoring system on site vs. moving to a SaaS provider.

For many organizations, IT is considered overhead and not the primary function of the organization. Companies move to the cloud for most of the same reasons companies out-source. Can someone else do it better for less? Cost is ually the easier consideration. Companies have to grapple with the ‘better’.

Does it mean more security, availability, capacity? Many cloud providers would say ‘yes’ to all and then some.

Organizations have to really consider and make that determination themselves. Make a real comparision between their options and not just follow the typical vendor hype.

Original Article - Cloud Computing Journal

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2 comments:

AMDE said...

Agreed. There are 2 issues here:
1 - too much hype.
2 - how to choose, once I determine the Cloud is the right solution?
There is too much hype about the Cloud and it should not be treated as a silver bullet solution for all IT woes.I found a great video on this topic which gives a framework of questions to evaluate if you should go to the Cloud and how to assess whether to have a public cloud, a private cloud or a hybrid solution [regardless of who is providing the cloud i.e. Amazon, SalesForce, Windows Azure]

“Bridging the Gap from On-Premises to the Cloud” by Yousef Khalidi:
http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/SVC20

for #2:There is alot of thrashing in this space and it is hard to determine which Cloud to goto as everyone is doing something a little different – its hard to
compare Cloud 2 Cloud. A similar diagnosis is by David Chappell:
"If I ruled the world”, says David Chappell, “I would make the phrase ‘private cloud’ illegal”. In conversation with David Gristwood, David Chappell, during
his recent world tour, discusses Windows Azure, its importance and role in the partner ecosystem, and other cloud players, such as Google, Amazon, Salesforce.com, VMware and more. You can see his Cloud2Cloud comparison in brief here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7NHQdh8_uo

Also, a more recent talk with David Chappell on this topic where he covers others issues such as:
- IaaS vs PaaS
- Private vs Public Cloud
- Applications that are not a great fit for the Cloud and those which are.
- The threat of Public Cloud to IT departments
see: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/David+Gristwood/Conversations-with-David-Chappell-about-Windows-Azure-and-Cloud-Computing/

AMDE said...

hope the above helps and is meant to extend Scott's great insight to for "real aruguments".
.a