Baseline Magazine - May/June 2010

& Resiliency

CLOUDY,

With a Chance of Security, Reliability

THERE ARE CLEAR BENEFITS TO USING THE CLOUD MODEL TO FACILITATE THE
RAPID AVAILABILITY OF IT RESOURCES, BUT IT’S NOT FOR EVERY ENTERPRISE.

By Raymond J. Sun

the project is completed, the IT resources are returned to the pool for reuse or reallocation. That means companies don’t have to make capital expenditures to purchase their own IT resources, which would have to be repurposed once the initial project was completed in order to continue justifying that capital expenditure.

Underlying the cloud computing model is the notion of automation, which enables self-service provisioning, high scalability, elasticity and ease of “return” when no longer needed. This model has been associated with virtualization, since virtualization is typically required to dynamically provision IT services or resources.

However, cloud computing adds the capabilities of user self-service request of services and automatic fulfillment based on those requests. Potential uses range from short-term development, or test projects, to dynamic incremental capacity for mission-critical, customer-facing Web sites.

AS CLOUD COMPUTING CONTINUES TO ROLL OVER the landscape, many enterprise IT organizations still struggle to resolve questions about its security, reliability and resiliency. These questions come up regardless of whether companies are considering a public or private cloud.

Enterprise IT leaders are examining the risks, benefits and issues of this approach, but many feel their judgment is still too cloudy to make the leap. In discussions at the industry group SHARE, I T professionals voice concerns about performance, availability, security, resiliency and usage accounting.

Cloud computing is a way of delivering IT services and resources over the Web, using rapid, self-service provisioning, while insulating the user of the services or resources from the management of the underlying IT infrastructure. In other words, as a consumer of IT resources, you can focus on using the resources, rather than managing them. So you don’t have to go through the hassles of procuring and implementing hardware and software to use IT resources.

The benefits of cloud computing for enterprise IT are pretty straightforward and well-documented. One of many benefits is that the cloud greatly reduces the time to market for developing new software applications. That results from the significant reduction in IT resource acquisition time—in many cases, from weeks to minutes.

In addition, if enterprise IT organizations are using a public cloud approach, they have to pay only for what they use, without committing to a long-term relationship. When

PUBLIC OR PRIVATE?

The two primary types of cloud deployment have been called “public” and “private.” A public cloud refers to shared IT services or resources (a multitenant environment) obtained from a third-party service provider, while a private cloud is usually owned and managed in-house. In some cases, a third party provides a private cloud specifically for one company.