Cloud Computing

There’s been a bunch of discussion in the tech world about cloud computing and the new marketing term “private cloud”. I find the term amusing since it’s somewhat of an oxymoron, but the term is taking hold, particularly among people who don’t really understand what cloud computing is.

The best explanation I’ve read came from Amazon’s CTO, Werner Vogels. His blog is interesting, if a bit too data center centric for my tastes. In his words:

Private Cloud is not the Cloud

I often get asked to define "The Cloud," especially because of the many permutations that different vendors use in trying to make their existing businesses look like a cloud offering. I define the cloud by it benefits, as those are very clear. What are called private clouds have little of these benefits and as such, I don’t think of them as true clouds.

The cloud:

• Eliminates Cost. The cloud changes capital expense to variable expense and lowers operating costs. The utility-based pricing model of the cloud combined with its on-demand access to resources eliminates the needs for capital investments in IT Infrastructure. And because resources can be released when no longer needed, effective utilization rises dramatically and our customers see a significant reduction in operational costs.
• Is Elastic. The ready access to vast cloud resources eliminates the need for complex procurement cycles, improving the time-to-market for its users. Many organizations have deployment cycles that are counted in weeks or months, while cloud resources such as Amazon EC2 only take minutes to deploy. The scalability of the cloud no longer forces designers and architects to think in resource-constrained ways and they can now pursue opportunities without having to worry how to grow their infrastructure if their product becomes successful.
• Removes Undifferentiated "Heavy Lifting."The cloud let its users focus on delivering differentiating business value instead of wasting valuable resources on the undifferentiated heavy lifting that makes up most of IT infrastructure. Over time Amazon has invested over $2B in developing technologies that could deliver security, reliability and performance at tremendous scale and at low cost. Our teams have created a culture of operational excellence that power some of the world’s largest distributed systems. All of this expertise is instantly available to customers through the AWS services.