There is of course still a lot of bluster surrounding Cloud Computing, and it will take some time before an agreed to set of definitions comes to light. I particularly like the path that Phil Wainewright is charting though. He’s been commentating on the space since the end of the 90’s and has a “no nonsense” approach I appreciate.
In an effort to simplify the discussion, a recent post of his, “When is a cloud not a cloud?“, begins to define different types of “Clouds” from the perspective of the original cloud - the internet. He lists three different types - Captive Cloud, Public Cloud (AWS, the Xuropa Platform primary cloud provider), and Virtual Private Cloud (a “walled off” cloud within a Public Cloud, like AWS).
The post is worth a read, but he starts to run aground on two points IMO. Firstly, to isolate connectivity as the key defining characteristic is to emphasize what should be a “cost of entry” point, and glosses over real value differentiators (eg. resource management via API). Secondly, he really does himself a disservice when he includes “Captive Clouds” as a type of cloud (even though he was trying to be ironic). We already have a name for that - “datacenter”. A collection of networked servers running something like VMWare behind a firewall is not a “cloud” of any description. It is a datacenter with better hardware utilization than the datacenters of the 90’s. That’s it. To put the word “cloud” in the same sentence as “datacenter” reduces clarity rather than enhances it.
This post was written by James Colgan on October 26, 2009
