NEWS: Three kinds of cloud computing and why they matter

NEW TREND: As datacentres become increasingly complex and costly to manage, more organisations are looking to cloud delivery service models to reduce costs, increase flexibility and improve time-to-market. - AP

TECHNOLOGY experts are unanimous in their belief that cloud computing will be the IT issue of this year. While cloud infrastructures are poised to revolutionise the way we access technology, it is also true that it is a vast area with a few grey areas.

This article aims to differentiate between the varied kinds of cloud environment to help enterprises make the right choice.

The ever increasing complexity of datacentres coupled with the massive growth of data is leading to an increase in resources required to manage such facilities.

To resolve key challenges like tradeoffs between IT agility and vendor lock-in, increasing complexity and costs in managing information silos, organisations have adopted virtualisation and are now looking to cloud delivery service models to reduce costs, increase flexibility and improve time-to-market.

Coupled with explosive unstructured content growth, organisations are also turning to instant IT delivery models.

On-demand IT delivery

In the move towards on-demand IT delivery, it hasn't taken long for customers to recognise the benefits of private, hybrid or public cloud models, the most tangible being significant cost savings.

From a capital expenditure perspective, organisations tend to over-purchase to deal with the requirements to support operations. This often leaves them with an abundance of underutilised hardware assets.

The ability of cloud infrastructures to grow in concert with business needs, minimises this upfront capital expense, moving them from "fixed costs" to "variable costs." Customers can reduce much of this operational expenditure by deploying cloud models, paying only for what they consume and eliminating the day-to-day management tasks.

On the flip side, on-demand access to computing resources poses a risk for IT organisations. If business users begin to outsource to cloud providers in order to get faster support, sensitive information could be put at risk.

To mitigate this risk, IT organisations should be thinking about developing an internal cloud-enabled architecture to provide greater business agility, in addition to a process for ad-hoc projects that need to be outsourced. This way they can move into the cloud in a controlled manner.

There are many deployment choices to consider for moving into the cloud. There are also some considerations to keep in mind when choosing the option that's right for your business.

Private Cloud: For simplicity, let's define a private cloud as cloud-enabled infrastructure within the physical walls of a datacentre.

A private cloud can provide many of the benefits of cloud without the security risks associated with public deployments. Because it is accessed over an internal network or intranet, it's as secure as the rest of your data.

And since you control it and the environment around it (i.e. networks, servers, etc), you can achieve enterprise level SLAs. But you do sacrifice some of the operational cost savings such as physical floor space, power, and cooling.

Hybrid Cloud: Now let's take a look at the hybrid or trusted cloud, which we will define as infrastructure that resides at a trusted service provider.

In this case, access is limited to appropriate resources at your organisation and delivered over a virtual private network or a secure Internet connection.

Since the infrastructure is out of the organisation's direct control, service levels could be impacted by external factors.

Customers also need to think about the physical security of the environment, which is why it is important to understand the service provider's process and requirements around physical access.

Public Cloud: This is similar to the hybrid, except that there is usually more general access over the Internet providing limited security.

Many public cloud offerings are quite inexpensive and SLAs are generally not guaranteed or measured differently than how an enterprise measures its SLAs. Features such as encryption, compression, backup, tiering and replication may not be available as well.

What makes a cloud?

Regardless of the type of cloud, there are some key features every cloud platform should have. Firstly, it is a secure, direct connection to get data into the cloud.

There also needs to be multitenancy capabilities to logically segregate the data, so that SLAs can be assigned to specific data types or applications.

The cloud should also have namespaces with access rights and security layers to prevent unauthorised access.

Given some of the trade-offs between the various cloud deployment models, how do you identify the most appropriate candidates for deployment?

Start by identifying the data in your environment that generally has lower business value and lower SLA requirements.

For example data types like home directory shares, static data or backup content can be moved from on-site "primary" to cloud "secondary" storage.

You can get immediate cost savings by moving this peripheral data. This helps in a couple of other ways as well, like freeing up resources to focus on the core business applications, improving operational efficiency and utilisation of your existing assets.

Next, it allows your organisation to gain experience and develop best practices for cloud deployments. Also, it allows you to move toward your core, Tier 1 applications at your own pace.

Maintaining IT agility is a must in today's competitive market. Cloud promises an on-demand service model that can support your business needs today, while providing a solid foundation for the datacentre of the future.

(Sunil Chavan is director of software group & cloud solutions for Asia Pacific at Hitachi Data Systems)