Bringing Clarity To The Cloud

The Jericho Forum(part of he Open Group) launched their latest initiative yesterday which is now focusing activities on establishing best practices to meet the challenges of collaborating securely in the cloud. The first part of this is the release of a paper detailing the cloud cube model. In essence this defines the variety of different cloud computing models that are available to companies and starts to address some of the key benefits and risks for each one.

For those just getting into cloud computing it works as a great primer on the different options available – and for those with some understanding it will bring some clarity to the subject. One of the problems with ‘the cloud’ is that it has been tough up until now to distinguish the different variations or even acknowledge that there are different cloud formations out there, and that one size does not fit all. So, are you after software (application)-as-a-service or a platform-as-a-service, are you thinking about in-house clouds or external ones, how about having proprietary or open API access? You see, the possibilities soon mount up. Of course, there is no single answer and different applications will be best suited to different cloud solutions. Understanding the differences will help you to make a good choice and reading the paper will remove some of the cloudiness around the cloud.

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April 17, 2009 | Filed Under Cloud computing, security | 1 Comment 

No To Cloud Computing?

In a recent survey, CIOs said no to cloud computing – or at least ‘not yet’. The industry needs to sit up and take notice and address their issues.

Cloud computing will offer benefits to enterprises of all sizes – it will enable an agile IT environment which is not constrained by internal skills and resources. But… only if security, availability are improved to a point where businesses will put their most valuable asset, their data into the cloud. We also need to address interoperability and remove the proprietary roadblocks which are already cropping up.

Sun made their cloud announcement – and while they are taking aim at Amazon’s cloud services, perhaps the most important step is that they have made some of their offerings compatible with Amazon’s. OK, so this is done to try and get people to move to their service, but – the outcome is interoperability and the freedom to choose. Hurray – a step in the right direction.

In the mean time cloud computing ’standards’ bodies are popping up everywhere. As with grid computing standards a decade ago it will take a little while to sort it out – but we will get there. Jericho, DMTF and SNIA all lead the way and those of use who participate in more than one will look at how they can interoperate and not overlap.

We live in interesting times and cloud computing is one of the things, in IT, which makes it interesting.

March 19, 2009 | Filed Under Cloud computing | 1 Comment