CLOUD DEFINITION

DEMYSTIFYING THE CLOUD 

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Ask 20 people about the definition of “cloud computing” and you will hear 20  different answers. The countless incarnations of cloud definitions and vendor marketing and proprietary initiatives have combined to create a ubiquitous confusion in the marketplace.

A "pure" cloud offering must offer the following characterizes:

• On-demand elasticity - the ability to increase or decrease of services/resources as demand goes up or down
• Pay-as-you-go and associated "metering" or measurement of the service - customer only pays for the services consumed
• Resource pooling - multi-tenant architectures meaning resources are shared among many customers
• Ubiquitous anytime, anywhere access - via mobile, Internet, PDAs, laptops, and so on
• Automated self-service capabilities

These are the cloud characteristics that drive business value; and business value is what customers need to look for in cloud offerings. 

A good working definition of cloud computing (version 15 as of this writing) was put forth by the National Institute of Science and Technology 

The NIST definition leaves out many of the architectural components and services that make up a complete cloud solution. These services and components include SLA management, metering, provisioning, monitoring, billing, capacity planning, and reporting. Open standards is the glue that allows clouds to interoperate with each other.

At the end of the day, nobody really cares about the precise definition of cloud computing. The bottom line questions should be: what does it all this mean to you as a CIO or business executive? How will it solve your most pressing business and technical challenges? 

Every business challenge and IT situation is different. As a result, it's important to map the potential of cloud solutions into a more specific value proposition tailored for each IT situation and business challenge.