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By Lauren Bielski
It's 2009 and "computing in the clouds" has gotten somewhat mainstreamed over two years since the market entrance of Amazon Web Services put the idea front and center. Yet, like pop diva Pink, it remains largely misunderstood.
Most techies "get" that the cloud is a form of distributed computing. To this, experts add that it relies on a method of virtualization, albeit a specialized type that is expressly set up for multitenancy, that is, designed for consumption by multiple client sites.
But it's in how infrastructure, OS, middleware, and application interact in "a cloud way" (along with who "owns" and "manages" cloud resources) that tends to muddle the concept for the uninitiated.
In a recent report, McKinsey pointed this out, indicating that there were "at least 22 different cloud definitions in common use." Despite this, intrigue is in the air and a bonified source of hype is starting to yield a significant early adopter market.
Infrastructure players like Amazon can deliver services via the cloud, known as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). Platform providers like Microsoft's Azure (which works with .NET) or Google (via Google Apps) can deliver platform-as-a-service (PaaS), which can be thought of as customizable frameworks, from which end-users build applications. Finally, there are service-based clouds that deliver applications, such as SalesForce.com for end-users that don't require customization.
Gartner Fellow David Mitchell Smith reminded CIOZone that supplier definitions often depend on their place in the ecosystem. So, little surprise then, when infrastructure players talk about "abstracted infrastructure that can host end-user applications," says Mitchell Smith, while platform as service providers might emphasize "services that yield applications that can do more or handle data in a more efficient way."
The internet's next step
Originally, the cloud simply referred the internet itself, a hinterland of interconnection outside your firewall used by everybody and only partially controlled-and not without persistent corporate elbow grease and a platoon of security providers. And to Hewlett Packard's Chief Technology Officer, Russ Daniels, that's where the cloud computing definition should begin. In a recent talk at the Cloud Computing Conference, he described it as "the next stage in the evolution of the internet."
Daniels went on to say the cloud is a model where there is "programmable access to memory across the internet in a way that adds value in terms of solving specific computing problems." [On June 4, Palo Alto-based HP announced that it was collaborating with Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications, to bring to market the company's new Computing as a Service (CaaS) for data center operations management and monitoring.]
The CTO said that HP sees the cloud as particularly good at establishing connection among partners in an ecosystem. He views the distributed, easy to utilize nature of cloud as a culmination of what has gone on with services oriented architecture (SOA), where discrete components combined on demand to get work done and the data stayed separate from the application; and Web 2.0, which added rich user experience to applications via AJAX and a social connotation to computing.
As heavily reported in the blogosphere late last summer, start-ups like Animoto relied on cloud-based infrastructure from Amazon to scale large (when FaceBook featured them) and smaller (when the fad seekers dropped off, leaving behind a smaller group of permanent users,) recounts Bernard Golden, chief executive officer of HyperStratus, a San Carlos, Calif.-based consultancy specializing in cloud services development. But you don't have to new and tiny to benefit. New York Times became another high profile example among those who know the cloud back in 2007 when they "borrowed" infrastructure muscle from Amazon to convert and store historical images.
Next: Elasticity a feature
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