Cloud Architecture vs Business Model

The key to whether users move in droves to Cloud Computing has to do with where the data resides and who controls and safeguards it. The Cloud architecture has been optimized for multi-tenancy. Most applications run in Virtual Machines allowing multiple customers to use the same server, operating system, and applications. They share storage resources across customers.

A company runs the risk of losing its valuable data if the hosting company has lax operations or security controls. Many customers, especially early on, will opt for Private Clouds where the hardware and software are housed on premises, but use the Cloud Architecture that allows for multi-tenancy within a company, but also allows the company to keep control of its data. If Public Cloud vendors, companies offering Cloud Computing services such as Amazon, Rackspace, Microsoft and new entrants such as HP, become competitive enough both in terms of pricing and safeguarding customer data, a large amount of computing could shift to the Cloud. This would shield users from making decisions about what vendor to use for computing, storage, networking, databases, etc. and this could reduce demand for name brand computing and storage suppliers.

In fact, on April 7, Facebook revealed the Open Compute Project whereby it “open sourced” the architecture of the servers used in and the high level design of its datacenters. Suffice it to say, there was no brand name hardware, storage or networking mentioned in the announcement. So far, forecasts of Cloud Computing have been small as much must be overcome before Public Cloud Computing and Storage can drive a major shift in IT spending (e.g. Security, trust in the quality of operations, viability of Cloud providers).

July 27, 2011

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