From CloudCamp to keynotes, conference sessions to the Unconference, cloud computing was a cornerstone of Interop 2009 in Las Vegas. But the enterprise-centric debate spent a lot of time focusing on what cloud computing isn't. Could it be that small and midsize companies understand cloud computing better than their larger competitors?
Even as smaller companies race to embrace cloud computing, larger enterprises continue to struggle with exactly what the cloud means, or try to twist the meaning of the term into something that more closely resembles their traditional IT infrastructure. Smaller businesses don't have to worry about "private clouds," they can just take advantage of cloud computing to make their companies more competitive.
At one keynote speech, Ric Telford, VP of cloud services for IBM, told the crowd that "the cloud is not a technology, it's a self-service method of delivery" incorporating sourcing options and economies of scale. "For large enterprises," Telford said, "the cloud is just a different way of managing infrastructure." He extolled the virtues of the oxymoronic concept of a "private cloud" -- which takes cloud features like standardized offerings, rapid provisioning, flexible pricing, and elastic scaling and brings them inside a single enterprise's IT department.
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Basically, Telford divides IT delivery into three modes:
There may be value in the so-called private cloud for large enterprises, but the very term itself seems designed to tell enterprises that they can embrace the cloud without having to fundamentally change the way they do business.
For smaller businesses, the "public cloud" is much, much more "just a different way of managing infrastructure." Telford said the cloud may enable smaller companies to "get out of the IT business altogether -- or reduce it as much as possible" so that their technical people can devote their attention to value-added activities. Startups, Telford said, may have 20 people and no hardware. "I've talked to them. It's interesting. It's a total mind-set change. You don't have to spend any of your startup money on cap ex, other than the workstations for your staff. ... I'm a big believer in that." Basically, the closer your company is to a clean slate, the easier it is to take advantage of the public cloud.
Cloud Computing: Is It A Technology, Or Isn't It?
Telford isn't the only one saying cloud computing isn't a technology. In a recent CNET post, James Urquhart says that while virtualization is a technology, cloud computing is an operations model:
But at the CloudCamp that kicked off Interop, Rackspace CTO John Engates tried to have it both ways. He laid out the following points about what cloud computing is from a conceptual standpoint:
And then he offered three levels of what cloud computing translates to in the real world:
- Software as a service (SaaS): Delivering apps via the cloud; for example e-mail (Gmail), instant messaging (AOL IM), and CRM (Salesforce.com).
- Platform as a service (PaaS): Creating development and distribution environments in the cloud; for example Saleforce's Force.com and Intuit's Partner Platform.
- Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): Also known as computing as a service (CaaS), this means delivering computing and storage resources via the cloud; for example, Amazon.com's Elastic Compute Cloud and Simple Storage Service and its rumored Google competitor (expected to launch within weeks).
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And that's only the beginning of the "services" model. Intuit's Partner Platform, for example, is normally considered a PaaS environment, but the company is trying to position it as "community as a service" or even "customers as a service." Using a "federated applications" model, the idea is that applications can hook into Intuit's APIs for access to QuickBooks and QuickBase -- and their customers. Even competitors like FreshBooks can build on this platform so that SMBs can use FreshBooks with their QuickBooks.
The divisions can be fuzzy, however. While many people use SaaS as a synonym for cloud computing, it's really only one portion of the cloud concept. Similarly, even though managed services delivers resources from a remote location, it's not the same as the cloud because it relies on dedicated resources, even if someone else owns them.
Next Page: Is Cloud Computing Like Riding The Bus?
