The ABCDE of Cloud Computing

Disclaimer: I am the Program Lead for Cloud Computing at Telstra’s Chief Technology Office so all my cloud-related posts will carry the disclaimer that my views are not necessarily the views of Telstra Corp. Ltd.

Now then. Like me, you have probably come across as many definitions for cloud computing as there are bad puns for it. It’s no perfect but here’s a simpler (and hopefully not simplistic) characterisation of the cloud and what it means for consumers, businesses and service providers

A is for Automation

Automation accelerates the entire managed ICT hosting lifecycle – from initial provisioning, elastic (up/down) scaling, reporting, moves/add/changes, and de-provisioning of virtual and physical storage, network and server resources. Automation naturally makes this cheaper for a provider perspective (measured in server-to-FTE ratios) and some of those benefits get passed to customers who get more responsive services.

B is for Billing based on C for Consumption without Contracts

This allows consumers of cloud services to change their fixed contract costs to variable pay-per-use costs, while outsourcing their ICT resource and expertise requirements.

D is for Decoupling of resources, which is at the heart of virtualisation

Note: Virtualisation breaks the dependencies between hardware and software resources in the solution stack,allowing the creation of larger resource pools, and dynamic sharing of resources, to improve flexibility, utilisation and return on assets. So we have the decoupling of thepresentation layer from the application as indesktop-as a service. We have the decoupling of the application from the OSas in application virtualisation necessary forsoftware as a service. We have the decoupling of the OS from the server in server virtualisation, a foundation stone for infrastructure as a service, and the server from the network as in network virtualisation.

E is for Embedded in the Network

Current and future ‘everything as a service’ offerings are embedded within and delivered over our a provider’s (hopefully secure) network. Embedding it in the  network allows providers  to ‘force-multiply’ their  cloud offerings with network functionality like telephony, messaging and content delivery and information such as presence, calendaring and location.