Can We Kill The Terms Private, Public, and Hybrid Cloud?

It's time to rant about the use of the terms Private, Public, and Hybrid when it comes to Cloud Computing. I hate the terms, and think the sooner they disappear, the better Cloud can live long and prosper.

Hybrid is a great term for corn; less good for IT. With corn, it describes a decades-long, ongoing effort to improve yield and feed more people in the process. It is a genetic hybrid with a single goal.

With IT, and specifically with Cloud, the term Hybrid is the squishiest of all terms. It means nothing. Public and private are less squishy perhaps, but often used in a way that only confuses people.

Let's Take a LookWithin an Enterprise Cloud you'll find the corporate HR intranet (inc. the company directory, outline of benefits, insurance claim forms, tally of vacation days, personal IRA and related statements, and pictures from the joy-filled company picnic), the accounting software (including the dreaded expense account app), all the engineering stuff, and the supply-chain management system.

Within the Consumer Cloud, you'll find the corporate website, and with it, your online commerce system if you have one. The latter runs to everything from the hardy originals (eg, Amazon and eBay) to iTunes, Expedia, and anything else you would buy online.

Most companies will, therefore, have an Enterprise Cloud and a Consumer Cloud. They may have significant on-site IT, but farm out the website to an ISP. They may have significant on-site IT, but mirror it with Akamai and have Akamai do the heavy lifting to deliver video.

They may have abstracted and virtualized some or all of their online IT, utilizing their capacity more effectively and consolidating a number of servers. They have also contracted with a third-party to handle seasonal spike

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Public vs. Private Clouds

Christian Perry has an article in Processor Magazine that I contributed some quotes to. The article is about the ongoing debate about the merits of public and private clouds in the enterprise.

One of the assertions that VMWare made at last week’s VMWorld conference is that secure hybrid clouds are the future for enterprise IT. This is a sentiment I agree with. But I also see the private part of the hybrid cloud as an excellent stepping stone to public clouds. Most future enterprise cloud apps will reside in the hybrid cloud; however, there will always be some applications, such as bursty web apps, that can benefit tremendously from the basic economics of public clouds.

http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1528535


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Clearing the Confusion Around "Private Cloud"

Clearing the Confusion Around "Private Cloud"

Cloud Computing Journal

I was on a LinkedIn thread titled 'How cloud computing is different from SaaS' where Rick Chapman who runs SoftLetter and SaaS University went on beating on this question 'What is a private cloud'? It is definitely worth it given the tremendous amount of confusion in the term 'Cloud' in general and 'Private Cloud' in particular. The motivation for this post is Rick and supported by a tweet I read around the same time from 'Carl Brooks' who is a technology writer on Cloud at TechTarget. Let me give it a shot.

First, Cloud is about leveraging economies of scale whether it is public or private. Large companies like Citi Bank, P&G, Unilever, Pfizer have the economies of scale to create an equivalent of ‘Amazon EC2′ within the corporate network.When most people refer to ‘Private Cloud’ they are thinking about Virtualization.

Private Cloud != Virtualization.

To me,
Cloud = Virtualization + Automated & Managed Provisioning + Integrated Billing

If you have this type of infrastructure inside your corporate network then you can proudly call you have a ‘Private Cloud’. However, most companies are using Virtualization – at least all the large ones – and I see some of them say they are already in Cloud during the networking sessions @ conferences. Just doing Virtualiztion alone does not qualify to be called as Private Cloud!

If and when the ‘Data Center’ in enterprise IT, starts offering services to various internal departments and divisions (IT and/or Business), the same way Amazon EC2 does for public customers, with a fully managed provisioning, integrated billing leading to pay for what you use then they can call themselves ‘Private Cloud’. If you are small company running 25 servers, all you can do is Virtualization – not ‘Private Cloud’

I know this is not going to end here. Preparing myself to tackle the attacks…. :-) !

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