The word cloud is becoming the most used and confusing buzz word in the IT world today. If you ask 10 IT executives what is the cloud, you will get 10 different answers. So I will discuss clouds in this post, at least my simplified definition of what a cloud is.
Cloud computing is thedelivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby sharedresources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid ) over a network (typically the internet). (Source: Wikipedia)
You can separate the cloud into 3 categories:
Public Cloud: A public cloud is one based on the standard cloud computing model, in which a service provider makes resources, such as applications and storage, available to the general public over the Internet. Public cloud services may be free or offered on a pay-per-usage model.
Private Cloud: A private cloud is infrastructure operated solely for a single organization. This type of cloud, contrary to common belief, does not imply a cloud built by you on- or off-premise. This type of cloud refers to your own private piece of a public cloud. Which means, you as an organisation go to a service provider and request that they dedicate hardware to you, but they own it, manage it and host it. You get the benefits of the public cloud, but you pay a for the dedicated hardware and service.
Hybrid Cloud: Hybrid cloud is a composition of two or more clouds (least one private and at least one public) that remain unique entities but are bound together, offering the benefits of multiple deployment models. For example, an organisation provides and manages some resources in-house and has others provided externally. This hybrid approach allows a business to take advantage of the scalability and cost-effectiveness that a public cloud computing environment can offer without exposing the mission-critical applications and data to outside vulnerabilities.
Most of us are already living in the clouds.
You are probably already usingconsuming a cloud computing service without realizing it. Google mail is an example of software offered as a service to billions of users across the world. The internet giant hosts its applications (email, word processing, calendars, photo sharing, and website creation tools) in the cloud.
My prediction is in 10 years 90% of enterprise workloads will be running in public cloud with few workloads left on premise for regulations and compliance reasons. Reasons, is massive public cloud providers will offer competitive rates due to economies of scale and will allow organisations to offload many of the administrative tasks that consume their time.
Thanks for reading.
Nick
