Computing in the Cloud

Let’s start with the basics: What is the cloud? 

That's a really good question – but it doesn't come with an easy answer. The cloud means many things to many people, and you’ll often find the term used and abused by our industry’s marketing and advertising folks. 

To ground our discussion, let’s consider a common set of definitions, since this will be the first of many blog posts where we’ll be exploring the cloud, cloud services and where they might or might not fit in your environment.

So let's kick it off with a definition, ripped from Wikipedia.

Cloud computing is a computing term or metaphor that evolved in the late 1990s, based on utility and consumption of computer resources. Cloud computing involves application systems which are executed within the cloud and operated through Internet enabled devices. Purely cloud computing does not rely on the use of cloud storage as it will be removed upon users download action. Clouds can be classified as public, private and hybrid.

That clears it all up - thank you Virginia, good night!

Or perhaps not. Let's try to simplify this a little, but there’s no guarantee we won't get muddled up a little.

We should start with characteristics common to cloud technologies that carry across public, private and hybrid clouds.

Agility and Responsiveness are two words that you'll often hear cloudy sales people say. And while they sound kind of cheesy, when done correctly, they’re both absolutely  true. The ability to set up and tear down requested services – often via a self service portal – in a  matter of minutes (or an hour) is a big change to the monolithic change control process that many organizations have when requesting new services. 

CAPEX vs. OPEX is another driver for companies to move to a hosted (public) cloud solution regardless of their size. To dig a little deeper, CAPEX, or capital expense, is the use of your cash to buy physical things, such as servers and software.  As a business expense, you get to depreciate that spend over time.  OPEX, or operational expense, is what you pay to cover what it costs to operate. For example, a new copier is CAPEX, while paper and toner are OPEX. You can immediately write down OPEX instead of getting the credit over a multi-year period. Given that cash flow is king, many organizations prefer a monthly OPEX payment rather than a major CAPEX spend.

Scalability is another key characteristic of a good cloud solution. The ability to keep adding storage or compute power quickly and easily without having to re-engineer the whole thing is key to cloud provider growth.

Cost reductions are often touted as another reason to make the move, but this can be touchy. You need to conduct a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis to determine whether that will be true for your business. Cost should really be pretty far down on the list of reasons to go to the cloud unless you're hankering for some disappointment. When cost drives the cloud project, the results are often an under-provisioning of services (to meet a budget number) and unhappy end users.

Reliability and accessibility are another pair of words that those sales reps will toss out there without explanation. And once again, they're both enabled by the underlying architecture of cloud systems. Reliability comes in the form of hundreds or thousands (or, in the case of Microsoft and Google, 1,000,000 each of servers and the ability for various services to move seamlessly to a different physical server if one has a problem. Accessibility is delivered by having these services available on the Internet, which means if your office loses power, everyone can still work from home because the data is "in the cloud.”

Up next

Now that you have a framework for what a cloud and cloud computing can do for you, we’ll explore different types of clouds and how they could work in your business in our next post.

Jeff Garell is a co-founder of CTG.