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Defining Cloud Again....2009 Revisited
2011-06-15 10:10:47
Way back in May 2009, Gartner published its report on the “Five Refining Attributes of Public and Private Cloud Computing”. This document attempted to define the characteristics that set cloud computing apart from other forms of internet available content and services. Two years later though, and it seems that the corporate world is still being enticed by the promise of “Cloud Computing” from providers who claim to offer such services despite them only adhering to one or two (or none!) of these key factors. This article will attempt to demonstrate that many of these advertised services cannot truly be classed as Cloud Computing as they fall well short of the standards laid down by Gartner which have become widely accepted within the industry.
To the cynical eye, it seems that any business which operates from the internet has now been rebranded as ‘Cloud Computing’ Clearly, internet services have been available for many years now and have included such features as internet based email, online storage, web hosting and collaboration sites. In recent years providers have reclassified these services and many others like them as cloud computing in an attempt to be seen as participating in the “next big thing”. Such important new trends are few and far between and can be short lived, driving many technology companies to capitalise as much as possible before the next “next big thing” comes along. In this regard, many parallels can be drawn with the rise in popularity of “social networking”. Like cloud computing, social networking has come to the fore due to the popularity of sites such as Facebook and its meteoric rise to become one of the most valuable and influential companies in the world. In the past, many sites have emphasised collaboration, sharing and social interaction but only recently have sites decided to place themselves under the umbrella of “social networking” for the same reason that technology companies are desperate to be known as “cloud computing” companies: to make a quick buck!
Even within companies that appear to offer a true Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) style of cloud computing, there is frequently a veneer of scalability and elasticity that quickly rubs off when anyone delves into the service that is actually offered. In some cases, companies can take up to two weeks to provision a simple virtualised server. In others, you are offered nothing more than a vnc or ssh connection to a server that was manually created by an engineer and leaves you with little control over your server. Even in Gartner’s first report on defining the nature of cloud computing, scalability was the feature that above all was emphasised. With the later addition of elasticity, they extended the essential “feature list” to incorporate predictable and flexible billing methods that can be increased or decreased on demand to mirror the change in resource usage. In the providers’ haste to provide a solution that they can call cloud, they often skip this characteristic to provide a simple vps that is completely static.
Many companies obfuscate their pricing schemes making it difficult to work out exactly what the cost will be and whether or not it fits into the budget. Individuals may even find that a machine that has been turned off for the duration of the billing period still turns up on the invoice. The cloud philosophy exists to turn IT into a consumable resource rather than a persistent one that you feel obliged to make the most of. A long term contract on a fixed state vps is not cloud computing. Functionally, it may operate the same as a cloud computing service, but the many ancillary benefits of using a true cloud computing service are lost to the customer. This flexibility can save the customer money through switching payment plans or decreasing the resources used. Crucially, this flexibility has to suit the customer which means it has to be automatic and instantaneous. Without it, such a service is not too far removed from the mainframe computing of the 1970s.
The shared nature of cloud computing is essential as it allows cloud operators to provide services that function as well as a dedicated service but at a greatly reduced cost. Resources are often “thin provisioned” to maximise their utilisation as opposed to the dedicated systems that spend the majority of the time idle, only bursting to maximum capacity occasionally. Any dedicated server offering cannot offer comparable economies of scale and won’t benefit the customer with significant cost reductions. On the other hand a cloud service will always have additional capacity that will allow the customer to scale out both horizontally and vertically and scale back again as desired. In essence, only the cloud solution can offer the flexibility to provide the customer with exactly what is needed at any specific time.
Gartner’s Service-Based attribute is also an argument against dedicated servers, vps or even private cloud in that the customer should not be able to see the inner workings of the cloud. The implication of this is that they are also not responsible for its upkeep, maintenance or upgrades. As far as the customer is aware, they should be able to access their service 24x7 regardless of what technology it relies on or who else is using it. Straight away, this eradicates initial set up costs and teams of engineers to be on hand to set up and administer the service. Indeed, a support facility is frequently included in the monthly cost of any cloud service so that any small business can obtain support without having any in house IT expertise.
Although Gartner’s report was written almost two years ago, we can still see the definition of “cloud” being extended further than anyone would have imagined when the term was first coined. Any service that is provided over the internet today can seemingly be deemed as cloud computing. The cynical view of this would be that providers are seeing this as a buzz term that has breathed new life into an industry that has stagnated recently in the corporate sector. As can be expected, companies want to be involved in this emerging trend as any technology company that doesn’t keep up can quickly be seen to be off the pace.
As a final word, it is likely that Gartner’s next iteration of their definition of cloud computing will be different from this one. Because many of the larger technology firms routinely refer to their offerings as being “cloud services”, the definition will no doubt expand to encompass a wider range of services. However, providers who can offer all 5 attributes defined by Gartner back in 2009, will continue to bring the greatest benefits to their clients.
Paul Woodward
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