Irrespective of the classification, cloud offers some
benefits providing that your technology choices are right. The most important
benefit of all is shared resource: virtualization enables you to share
computing, network and storage resources in a dynamic way. For example, you
could literally share computing resources like memory, CPU and NIC to multiple
computing agents known as VM (Virtual Machine). Some vendors even take this
further offering a number blade server switches to be interconnected,
virtualized and managed through single console. These types of solutions
definitely help in scalability and instant provisioning.
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Figure 1. Benefit of Cloud/Virtualization: resource
sharing, instant provisioning and scalability.
I discussed in my earlier in my article at LinkedIn that by
interconnecting pods (that provides similar virtualization capabilities) you
can grow your data center to an unparalleled scale. However, with so many
vendors and solutions out there, sometimes making a choice is an overwhelming
task. One way to overcome this confusion is to make choice based on business
needs. First question, is your business subject to regulatory restriction? Your
compliance requirement will definitely guide you to choose right solutions. For
example, SOX, PCI and HIPPA compliance requirements may restrict you to choose
private cloud solution over public cloud deployment. Evaluate your compliance requirement based
on business goals and objectives both what needed at present and what will be
required in future.
The following table provides some of the insights about the
benefits of public vs private vs hybrid cloud deployment.
In a survey with 930 respondents (Enterprise Respondents =
306 and SMB respondents = 624), RightScale observed that preference for hybrid
cloud is gradually increasing while enterprise respondents are clustered
towards middle as cloud beginner or observer/explorer. The survey reported that
there is an increase interest among enterprise respondents towards cloud
solutions in 2015 than 2014 (RightScale, 2015).
Given the increase interest of Hybrid cloud, it may be
useful to discuss briefly on the basics of hybrid cloud configuration. From
networks configuration, perspective you may choose either the pods or the
configuration shown here in the figure 1. A simple implementation would be to
allocate few VMs to implement software that will manage the intercloud
transfers and operations for you. Vendors like Cisco, EMC and Vmware all provides
software capabilities to integrate your private IaaS/cloud to public cloud. I
am embedding here two videos from EMC and Cisco to provide you the basic notion
of hybrid cloud.
I am not suggesting or recommending any vendor rather the
inclusions of videos are for educational purpose only. If you like to learn
further about various aspects of clouds follow me at linkedin or twitter.
Reference:
RightScale, 2015. STATE OF THE CLOUD REPORT: Central IT Is Taking the Lead to Broker Cloud
Services to the Enterprise. RightScale.com. available at http://assets.rightscale.com/uploads/pdfs/RightScale-2015-State-of-the-Cloud-Report.pdf
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