Is your company considering (public/private) cloud computing?

[On SaaS]

Hi all,

I am doing a bit of research on specific use cases of cloud computing.
Got a few questions to the enterprises in the group:

1) Is your company considering (public/private) cloud computing?
2) Which IT group(s) are driving the initiative?
3) What initial applications or types of applications are planned for
cloud deployment?
4) What are the (perceived/real) benefits of these deployments?

Thanks!

Jian

--
CloudFeed.net - Blogging about the SaaS and cloud computing world
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computing news
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[Ben Yamin]

Wouldn't "private cloud computing" be a paradoxical phenomenon? if it
is private it probably means that you have server farm(s) dedicated to
your business. How would that be different from traditional or
"non-cloud" infrastructure that most companies use?

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

[Ray Nugent]

I think you mean oxymoron. Enterprise cloud, is, by definition, not possible. I've termed it a Fog. Gentlemen start your flamethrowers...

Ray

[todd]

Ben Yamin wrote:
> Wouldn't "private cloud computing" be a paradoxical phenomenon? if it
> is private it probably means that you have server farm(s) dedicated to
> your business. How would that be different from traditional or
> "non-cloud" infrastructure that most companies use
>

Your typical process in a company goes something like:
1. Estimate how much hardware you need for a project X months before you even start development.
2. Justify (1) and argue for a while before the money is approved.
3. Wait a long time before the hardware is bought and delivered.
3. Wait a long time for space to be found in a datacenter somewhere.
4. Wait a long time for the equipment to be turned up and available.
6. Repeat the process when your project grows and you need more hardware. And if you got (1) wrong you are in deep trouble.

In addition, getting a set of machines makes for brittle setups. Host names are usually hard coded in config files and lots of other static relationships slip into your configuration. Lots of the machines across all the different projects are way under utilized.

Having a private cloud infrastructure means I could deploy using a cloud API and I would be somewhat insulated from the underlying equipment procurement process. Equipment utilization would go way up. My development and deployment environment could be nearly identical. It would be possible to handle spike loads without way over provisioning to start with. And you will never get funding for the over provisioning in the first place, so when the spikes come you are in trouble.

All nice things. It's flexibility, programmability, and abstraction.

[Krishna Sankar (ksankar)]

FT coming up … ;o) Actually, I agree with you. So no real flames.

But many companies will not venture outside the corporate firewall with reckless abandonment; they need the comfort and cocoon of the firewall !

 

With that in mind,

Public Cloud = Hosted outside traditional enterprise firewall, by companies other than self. Here many companies can optimize the capacity.

Private Cloud = Hosted inside traditional enterprise firewall, by the enterprise IT, for the enterprise IT (and shall not perish from the earth). Here many business Units can optimize the collective excess capacity

 

Cheers

<k/>

[Joe.Al...@bull.com]

I must be getting old when I experience déjà vu  with every new generation of computing.  I remember a verbal debate over whether "private internet" was an oxymoron.  As we all know, it became known as an intranet.  With each new generation we seem to get confused with business model or usage model vs. the reuse of technological underpinnings.

With that said and willing to accept the flames, of course there can be "private cloud computing" or "enterprise computing".  Even though the usage/business models may be different between public and private, the technical underpinnings and capacity/performance objectives can be similar.  Several weeks ago I was attending a Keynote speech at the combined session of Next Generation Data Center Conference and LinuxWorld & Expo Conference.

Jeffrey Birnbaum, Managing Director and Chief Technology Architect, Merrill Lynch explained what they are doing inside the Enterprise (private).  His speaker bio is at http://www.ngdcexpo.com/live/11/keynotes//SN823879/keynotebio//CMONYB0004S9 and his presentation summary is at http://www.ngdcexpo.com/live/11/keynotes//SN823879 .  He focuses on "stateless computing" and how it relates to cloud computing.  Of course, when it comes to the adoption of new terms, it is often how the press, analysts, consultants, and conferences start using the terms (right or wrong) to promote their business objectives that dictate future majority usage.  See how one reporter interpreted Jeffrey's presentation at http://www.on-demandenterprise.com/features/Cloud_Computing_Virtualization_20_Among_NGDC_Highlights.html .  An example from the article is: "Actually, he explained, it's not so much about being stateless as it is about where the state is. Merrill Lynch is moving from a dedicated server network to a shared server network, functioning essentially as a cloud that allows Merrill Lynch to provision capacity rather than machines."

My current observation (will evolve over time) is that "public cloud computing" business models are going after the low hanging fruit of pulling PC-based apps back into a service (dare I say SaaS or outsourcing) with revenue coming from advertising &/or subscriptions with the differential being free vs. support/sla.  "Private cloud computing" for Enterprise Computing (i.e., business apps) tend to focus on shared server networks (internal service instead of external service) through exploiting mainframe disciplines of old (e.g., resource sharing, workflow management, RASSS, etc.) but across discrete servers instead of inside a very large SMP Server.

Read the entire article reflecting the NGDC conference and how many presenters from a variety of disciplines were using public and private cloud terminology.

Regards,

Joe B. ALEXANDER
Director Strategy, Bull Products & Systems

Ray Nugent <rnu...@yahoo.com> Sent by: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com 09/03/2008 09:55 PM Please respond to cloud-c...@googlegroups.com

To cloud-c...@googlegroups.com cc

[Jan Klincewicz]

        It is not uncommon for larger organizations to adopt a "Shared Services" approach (sometimes called insourcing) where several business units share IT resources.   Of course, prior to the 70's and 80's it was ALWAYS done that way and the "Data Processing" department was highly centralized.

       With the advent of minicomputers like the Vax or Data General Eclipse, and later PCs and LANS, DISTRIBUTED computing became popular, with individual departments providing their own IT.  Eventually, management realized that certain resources, like Networking and Storage were more efficiently centralized, then Email, and before you know it, IT is centralized again.

        If you peruse the ITIL v3 books, there is a great deal of fuss about this, where essentially, internal  IT competes with SaaS providers, and are expected to meet SLAs etc. as well or better as outside providers, or get cut from the company.  It DOES sort of force internal IT towards accountability, but essentially "private cloud" computing is the pendulum swinging back.

Cheers,

Jan

--
Cheers,
Jan

[Reuven Cohen]

On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 12:51 AM, Ray Nugent <rnu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I think you mean oxymoron. Enterprise cloud, is, by definition, not
> possible. I've termed it a Fog. Gentlemen start your flamethrowers...
>
> Ray
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Ben Yamin <benya...@gmail.com>
> To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Wednesday, September 3, 2008 9:38:22 PM
> Subject: Re: Is your company considering (public/private) cloud computing?
>
>
> Wouldn't "private cloud computing" be a paradoxical phenomenon? if it
> is private it probably means that you have server farm(s) dedicated to
> your business. How would that be different from traditional or
> "non-cloud" infrastructure that most companies use?
>
>
>

I would agree with Ray, for us a cloud represents off site resources
such as storage and compute capacity that can be easily accessed if
and when needed. This is actually one of the main reasons we call our
"private cloud platform" the elastic computing platform. That said,
most of customers are basically looking for an EC2 like exeperience
within their exisiting data centers. So a private cloud basically
means the ability to use approaches that look like Amazon Ec2 or
platforms like Google Apps or salesforce's force within your data
center. More simply, the ability to manage your data center
resources as a service.

ruv

[Phillip Lay]

How about dedicated Private Clouds for specialist verticals?

This may not work for risk adverse verticals like defense, financial service providers, major telcos etc but maybe organisations with specialist requirements; health, education, local gov/councils, Not-for-profits/NGO's can leverage the economy of scale of cloud computing purpose built to serve specific purposes with dramatically lower costs via shared services but with maximum efficiency/output (custom built apps for their specific verticals).

Would this work in your said vertical business?

Phillip 

[Rich Wellner]

Ray Nugent wrote:

I think you mean oxymoron. Enterprise cloud, is, by definition, not possible.

By what definition?

Here's the key characteristics from the cloud computing wiki:

    * Capital expenditure minimized and thus low barrier to entry as infrastructure is owned by the provider and does not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks. Services are typically being available to or specifically targeting retail consumers and small businesses.
    * Device and location independence[21] which enables users to access systems regardless of location or what device they are using (eg PC, mobile).
    * Multitenancy enabling sharing of resources (and costs) among a large pool of users, allowing for:
          o Centralization of infrastructure in areas with lower costs (eg real estate, electricity)
          o Peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest possible load levels)
          o Utilization and efficiency improvements for systems that are often only 10-20% utilised[17].
    * Performance is monitored and consistent but can be affected by insufficient bandwidth or high network load.
    * Reliability by way of multiple redundant sites, which makes it suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery[22], however IT and business managers are able to do little when an outage hits them[23].
    * Scalability which meets changing user demands quickly, without having to engineer for peak loads. Massive scalability and large user bases are common but not an absolute requirement.
    * Security which typically improves due to centralization of data, increased security-focused resources, etc. but which raises concerns about loss of control over certain sensitive data. Accesses are typically logged but accessing the audit logs themselves can be difficult or impossible.
    * Sustainability through improved resource utilisation, more efficient systems and carbon neutrality[24].

None of those seem to exclude enterprise clouds.

Here's the list of attributes I compiled from this group and others IRL:

1) Multiple vendors accessible through open standards and not centrally
administered
2) Non-trivial QOS (see the gmail debate thread)
3) On demand provisioning
4) Virtualization
5) The ability for one company to use anothers resources (e.g. bobco 
using ec2)
6) Discoverability across multiple administrative domains (e.g. 
brokering to multiple cloud vendors)
7) Data storage
8) Per usage billing
9) Resource metering and basic analytics
10) Access to the data could me bandwidth/latency limitations, security,
11) Compliance – Architecture/implementation, Audit, verification
12) Policy based access – to data, applications and visibility
13) Security not only for data but also for applications

Now here we start to see some things that aren't applicable to enterprise clouds (i.e. 1, 5, 6). But the bulk of the list still works.  And it's worth noting that EC2 fails on more than three of those things (i.e. 1, 11, 12, 13), but people don't hesitate to allow them the use of the term cloud.

In previous technology revolutions I learned the lesson (slowly) to not care so much what things are called as much as what they do (which was why, in my early writings on this group I was trying to point out to people (mostly unsuccessfully) that there are lessons to be learned from grid computing).  But claiming there is a canonical definition of cloud and that enterprise cloud is a nonsense term doesn't seem accurate on the face of things.  Enterprise Cloud does, however capture the essence of what many large corporate IT groups are doing/considering.  Rather than telling them they shouldn't be calling it cloud/grid/enterprise cloud/managed services/SaaS/whatever, I'm taking the approach of helping them meet their business needs, with technology wearing a variety of banners, and letting them call it whatever they like.

rw2

[Jian Zhen]

Rich, 

I agree with you. I asked the same question, by whose definition, in this post, The Rise of Cloud Privatization. I think we should get away from the semantics of the word and look at the actual attributes of clouds. If it acts like a cloud, feels like a cloud and looks like a cloud, then it is a cloud, regardless of whether it's inside or outside of the data center.

Jian

--

CloudFeed.net - Blogging about the SaaS and cloud computing world

Follow on http://twitter.com/onsaas

[Ivan Casanova]

Here at DataSynapse we have a number of customers building private
clouds - which we call Cloud Computing for the Corporate Data Center.

What we are seeing is corporate owned and operated data centers
strategies leveraging the lessons learned from Amazon, and the other
public cloud providers to offer highly scalable shared services to
internal development teams (akin to what Amazon is doing in the public
cloud) and highly scalable applications to users (akin to apps that
Google offers consumers in the public cloud).

Much the way that Google is able to offer new applications for
marginal costs, corporate users are finding that by automating
packaging and provisioning of enterprise apps and then dynamically
allocating data center resources (compute / storage / bandwidth) based
on demand - that they can approach a model where new services can be
scaled at marginal costs, and new services can be offered with minimal
marginal cost.

I wrote a paper on this called Cloud Computing for the Corporate Data
Center - you can download it at http://www.datasynapse.com/whitepapers

Regards
Ivan Casanova
VP Product Marketing and Solutions

DataSynapse (www.datasynapse.com)

[Ray Nugent]

By my definition.

By my definition the key benefits of cloud computing are -

1) On Demand Scaling - try that in anything run by an enterprise IT group! The finance guys simply won't let it happen. There is a process for scaling and it takes weeks, not minutes and there is a lot of paper work.

2) No Capital Costs - again, not possible in an Enterprise. Enterprises need to own or lease things. The building, the racks, the CPUs, the storage.

3) No labor costs - once you own you need people to put it all together, maintain it, fix it, change it. Whether they are employees or outsourced the IT folks are gonna get paid.

Now, is it possible that some enterprises can remake themselves to be able to support these feature in something they term an internal or enterprise cloud? Sure. Just understand that the people, not the technology, are the biggest barrier to enterprise cloud computing and the likelihood of wholesale change in how business operate internally is slim.

But certainly someone will sell something called alternatively an enterprise cloud, private cloud or internal cloud.

It will probably be an appliance...

Ray

[Bob Lozano]

For many enterprise customers there will always be at least a class - if not most - applications which need to be run "inside their walls". What that means precisely, of course, can take on almost as many meanings as there are organizations.

What will be common for those organizations is that public clouds, at least as they are constituted today, will not be "inside their walls".

Yet the desire to gain the clear scaling, operational, flexibility, and potential capital cost reductions of the public clouds continues ... and as we all experience, continues to grow.

So arguing about whether folks will do private clouds or not is really besides the point - they will simply adopt the technologies and best practices of the public clouds as it makes sense, as it becomes widely available and sufficiently vetted to fit their appetite for such things.

For many the initial foray into private clouds will simply be an evolution of their current efforts at virtualization, for others it will be a descendant of their grid efforts, for others perhaps a combination of both. We are seeing these combinations and more - many more.

Btw, my colleague Sam Charrington also gave a talk at NGDC on this topic - Roger Smith of InformationWeek covered it here.

I also think that at least three classes of clouds will dominate over time:

• Public Clouds - what we know and love, ranging from the general purpose to the specialized
• Private Clouds - Infrastructure "inside the walls" that shares key technologies and attributes with the public clouds
• Virtual Private Clouds - infrastructure that's outside the walls, perhaps hosted within a public cloud, that in every way is securely partitioned from every other customer of the provider.
  

The best enterprises will mix and match between these. In all cases it will be crucial to have applications that are natively "cloud enabled", of course - but that's an argument we can resurrect in another thread!

Bob

--
Bob Lozano

Appistry
www.appistry.com/blogs/bob (professional blog)
hopeitis.com (personal blog)

[Alexis Richardson]

@Ray

A major issue, not in your list, for large corporates is cost
attribution - even more than 'elasticity' the ability to work out who
is using what is necessary for delivering shared services. You can
call this the 'utility' part of the cloud model. But I think it is
essential to cloud - public or 'private'.

alexis

[Ray Nugent]

Please don't get me wrong, like most here, many of my customers ask for private cloud infrastructure too. I think a distinction between what can be achieved in a private cloud vs a public one is in order lest the potential customers of "private clouds" fall prey to some unscrupulous marketing types armed with "White Papers" showing the benefits of a public cloud coming to the enterprise if only you'll buy their platform. It's the classic enterprise software scam...er sale. :-)

Ray

----- Original Message ----
From: Bob Lozano <bobl...@gmail.com>
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2008 8:49:53 AM
Subject: Re: Is your company considering (public/private) cloud computing?

[William Louth (JINSPIRED.COM)]

Hi Ray,

I recently published a high level vision (and product mapping document) on this very subject.
http://www.jinspired.com/products/jxinsight/meteringthecloud.html

It is not a whitepaper but yes it does mention a product but hopefully people can avoid the "this is a sales pitch" cheap attack and just look at the concepts and approach - abc for cloud computing.

Kind regards,

William

[Bob Lozano]

Ray-
I hear you, and that's a great point ... the reality is that this transition will undoubtedly be marked by many false steps, including over-hyped, marketing gloss-overs - "pigs with lipstick" and all that.

But there is real substance that will mark this transition - adoption of (true) commodity everything, complete virtualization from specific hardware, on-demand provisioning / de-provisioning, applications that are comfortable running on aggregations of these small resources - to name just a few.

I think that some of the technologies being developed for public clouds (particularly in multi-tenancy provisioning and billing, operational interfaces, and large-scale data stores) are clearly leading the industry. I also think that the inherent detachment from specific hardware that comes with using a public cloud enforces a much greater psychological sense of virtualization, and that's a very good thing.

And the apps ... have I mentioned the cloud-enabled apps? ;-)

Bob

[Dilip Krishnan]

-- BEGIN flame

Well thats what SaaS is all about isn't it? Salesforce.com is an example of software in the cloud... doesn't mean its accessible to everyone... its still an enterprise application available in the cloud. Granted there is a lot of security/isolation thought that goes into cloud applications that are targeted for the enterprise.

-- END flame :)

Regards,
Dilip Krishnan

[Ray Nugent]

You have no idea what I was talking about do you?

----- Original Message ----
From: Dilip Krishnan <dilip.k...@gmail.com>
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com

[Dilip Krishnan]

I totally dint... :-) as you might've also guessed it wasn't a flame either :)

I'm really trying get an understanding of what "private" means in this context, if a company wants to externalize its services for e.g. Walmart to its suppliers, or even better Amazon and its catalog services to its various external merchants. Its not really an oxymoron in that case is it? Its a legitimate enterprise exposing a integration services 'cloud'. Why would you term it "Fog" computing? 

Regards,
Dilip Krishnan

[Christopher Steel]

This goes back to the previous discussion of dark clouds. When you think DHS, there are multiple agencies looking to access services in the cloud, the whole of which can’t be open to the public. I don’t think that makes the “private” or “dark” cloud any less of a cloud. It is just a matter of the services provided.

 

-Chris

[Ray Nugent]

Well except then it wouldn't be private, would it? Correct me if I'm wrong but most, if not all, of what I'm hearing from customers is around how to take AWS like services and tuck them within the four walls of their enterprise to somehow get economies of scale, lower costs and quicker scale/customer service to their constituents. Therein lay the Foggy part...

----- Original Message ----
From: Dilip Krishnan <dilip.k...@gmail.com>
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2008 11:48:13 AM
Subject: Re: Is your company considering (public/private) cloud computing?

I totally dint... :-) as you might've also guessed it wasn't a flame either :)

I'm really trying get an understanding of what "private" means in this context, if a company wants to externalize its services for e.g. Walmart to its suppliers, or even better Amazon and its catalog services to its various external merchants. Its not really an oxymoron in that case is it? Its a legitimate enterprise exposing a integration services 'cloud'. Why would you term it "Fog" computing? 

Regards,
Dilip Krishnan

On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 1:13 PM, Ray Nugent <rnu...@yahoo.com> wrote:

You have no idea what I was talking about do you?

----- Original Message ----
From: Dilip Krishnan <dilip.k...@gmail.com>
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2008 10:42:04 AM
Subject: Re: Is your company considering (public/private) cloud computing?

-- BEGIN flame

Well thats what SaaS is all about isn't it? Salesforce.com is an example of software in the cloud... doesn't mean its accessible to everyone... its still an enterprise application available in the cloud. Granted there is a lot of security/isolation thought that goes into cloud applications that are targeted for the enterprise.

-- END flame :)

Regards,
Dilip Krishnan

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 11:51 PM, Ray Nugent <rnu...@yahoo.com> wrote:

I think you mean oxymoron. Enterprise cloud, is, by definition, not possible. I've termed it a Fog. Gentlemen start your flamethrowers...

Ray

----- Original Message ----
From: Ben Yamin <benya...@gmail.com>
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 3, 2008 9:38:22 PM

Subject: Re: Is your company considering (public/private) cloud computing?

Wouldn't "private cloud computing" be a paradoxical phenomenon? if it
is private it probably means that you have server farm(s) dedicated to
your business. How would that be different from traditional or
"non-cloud" infrastructure that most companies use?

On 9/3/08, On SaaS <ons...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I am doing a bit of research on specific use cases of cloud computing.
> Got a few questions to the enterprises in the group:
>
> 1) Is your company considering (public/private) cloud computing?
> 2) Which IT group(s) are driving the initiative?
> 3) What initial applications or types of applications are planned for
> cloud deployment?
> 4) What are the (perceived/real) benefits of these deployments?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Jian
>
> --
> CloudFeed.net - Blogging about the SaaS and cloud computing world
> OnSaaS.info - Providing a continuous stream of SaaS and cloud
> computing news

[Bob Lozano]

I think those are two different use cases.

Ray, what you're describing is what I think of as private clouds.

Chris, I think the whole dark clouds discussion is what we've been calling "private virtual clouds" - clouds that are outside the walls, but for a restricted community.

I'm most definitely open to a better name for this one, btw.

Bob

[Jim Starkey]

Dilip Krishnan wrote:
> I totally dint... :-) as you might've also guessed it wasn't a flame
> either :)
>
> I'm really trying get an understanding of what "private" means in this
> context, if a company wants to externalize its services for e.g.
> Walmart to its suppliers, or even better Amazon and its catalog
> services to its various external merchants. Its not really an oxymoron
> in that case is it? Its a legitimate enterprise exposing a integration
> services 'cloud'. Why would you term it "Fog" computing?
>

As I understand it, if you use Amazon EC2, it is cloud computing. But
if Amazon itself uses EC2, it's only fog computing. Or maybe (shudder)
internal cloud computing.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. Cloud computing is a technology,
not an accounting practice. It shouldn't (and doesn't) matter who pays
for the hardware, floor space, and electricity as long as you can make
it go faster, server more clients, or be more robust by throwing more
resources at it, or, if need be, slow it down by redirecting resources
elsewhere.

The idea that cloud computing requires that you receive an invoice from
another company is absurd, unless you happen to be the other company or,
say, one of its resellers.

So, gentlemen, let's leave the bean counting to those who find counting
beans interesting and talk about how to best use this exciting new
platform. Please?

--
Jim Starkey
President, NimbusDB, Inc.
978 526-1376

[Laurent Therond]

> As I understand it, if you use Amazon EC2, it is cloud computing. But
> if Amazon itself uses EC2, it's only fog computing. Or maybe (shudder)
> internal cloud computing.
>
> This is, of course, utter nonsense. Cloud computing is a technology,
> not an accounting practice. It shouldn't (and doesn't) matter who pays
> for the hardware, floor space, and electricity as long as you can make
> it go faster, server more clients, or be more robust by throwing more
> resources at it, or, if need be, slow it down by redirecting resources
> elsewhere.

Actually, IMHO, I think the news is even worse for Cloud Computing vendors
that like the idea of standing on a *huge*, *new*, *enterprise software*
market.

I say this because Cloud Computing is more of an architectural methodology
than something one can shrinkwrap and productize for mass distribution.
I also think a great many Cloud Computing efforts will be realized using
open source or other commoditized software, thereby reducing the
opportunity for any vendor to become "the next Microsoft".

Sure, there will be niche segments, where small companies will act as
enablers for Cloud Computing, but no one vendor is going to become
tremendously rich marketing those plumbing elements.

So, public/private, external/internal, whatever...it's not what it is,
it's what you do with it.

Amazon and Google would love for external entities to cofinance their
clouds, because they own the infrastructure *and* they actually use it to
run their own affairs. On the other hand, if you were to offer them to
migrate their mission critical systems to some other Cloud Computing
vendor (let's assume you could find one up to the task), they would laugh
at you loudly.

[vit...@citigroup.com]

some of my thoughts....
I think one of the major challenges for corporations that already have
large deployments of compute/HPC grid clusters and/or vertical shared
clusters (e.g. web/app server farm) is how to expose that back-end
infrastructure and make it available as a more general purpose
resource pool to different application profiles. I think few areas
that private cloud vendors need to address include:
(1) interfacing to this private cloud (App integration level,
dpeloyment, packaging..)
(2) the resource and workload orchestration
(3) management & common utilities - companies that already have large
compute grids should have a level of common functions (e.g.
chargeback, bare-metal/hw provisioning, security, monitoring, audit
logging/trails, app-level resource provisioning/allocation...). In
some cases if these services are tightly bundled with the point
solution it can be hard to abstract out. Additionally I think going to
this "private" cloud architecture pattern will require more
functionality robustness and expose further weakness in the potential
massive scale.

I would like to understand how vendors play in this space a bit
more.

On Sep 4, 1:09 am, "Krishna Sankar (ksankar)" <ksan...@cisco.com>
wrote:
> FT coming up ... ;o) Actually, I agree with you. So no real flames.

> > Follow onhttp://twitter.com/onsaas,http://friendfeed.com/onsaas
>
> --
> Sent from Gmail <http://gmail.google.com/>  for mobile |
> mobile.google.com- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Khazret Sapenov]

Jian,

I have converted several of my friend's companies, mostly SMB,

so I'll give their reasoning. See below

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 2:36 AM, On SaaS <ons...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

I am doing a bit of research on specific use cases of cloud computing.
Got a few questions to the enterprises in the group:

1) Is your company considering (public/private) cloud computing?

Yes, already passed that stage a year ago. Using a combination of Amazon EC2 and IBM's solutions.

 

2) Which IT group(s) are driving the initiative?

Migration of part of business processes was initiated from outside (guess who) and conveyed to IT management, tested through pilot project and later passed for approval to top level executives.

 

3) What initial applications or types of applications are planned for
cloud deployment?

Customer web front-end for claims processing, CRM, computational fluid dynamics already work in cloud. At the moment analysis is being done to find business process that fit cloud model, after that there'll be planning phase.   

 

4) What are the (perceived/real) benefits of these deployments?

Reduced costs, flexibility, shorter time to market cycle.

cheers,

Khazret Sapenov 

[Botchagalupe]

Ray,

3Tera has customer's (e.g., BT) that run AppManager. I would call
those clouds. I think IBM to a certain extent are building private
cloud infrastructures. Also, a very energetic enterprise my actually
take Eucalyptus as a private cloud. IMHO, a true cloud abstracts the
hardware and the infrastructure software. I believe all of the above
mentioned should qualify.

<a href="http://www.johnmwillis.com/">John</a>

On Sep 4, 3:18 pm, Ray Nugent <rnug...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well except then it wouldn't be private, would it? Correct me if I'm wrong but most, if not all, of what I'm hearing from customers is around how to take AWS like services and tuck them within the four walls of their enterprise to somehow get economies of scale, lower costs and quicker scale/customer service to their constituents. Therein lay the Foggy part...
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Dilip Krishnan <dilip.krish...@gmail.com>
> To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2008 11:48:13 AM
> Subject: Re: Is your company considering (public/private) cloud computing?
>
> I totally dint... :-) as you might've also guessed it wasn't a flame either :)
>
> I'm really trying get an understanding of what "private" means in this context, if a company wants to externalize its services for e.g. Walmart to its suppliers, or even better Amazon and its catalog services to its various external merchants. Its not really an oxymoron in that case is it? Its a legitimate enterprise exposing a integration services 'cloud'. Why would you term it "Fog" computing?
>
> Regards,
> Dilip Krishnan
>

> On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 1:13 PM, Ray Nugent <rnug...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> You have no idea what I was talking about do you?
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Dilip Krishnan <dilip.krish...@gmail.com>
> To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2008 10:42:04 AM
> Subject: Re: Is your company considering (public/private) cloud computing?
>

> -- BEGIN flameWell thats what SaaS is all about isn't it? Salesforce.com is an example of software in the cloud... doesn't mean its accessible to everyone... its still an enterprise application available in the cloud. Granted there is a lot of security/isolation thought that goes into cloud applications that are targeted for the enterprise.

> -- END flame :)
>
> Regards,
> Dilip Krishnan
>

> > Follow onhttp://twitter.com/onsaas,http://friendfeed.com/onsaas
>
> --
> Se

[jamesurquhart]

Someone recently noted that it seems the economic definition of Cloud
Computing is getting confused with the technical definition, and this
discussion is pretty definitive proof. A compute cloud is a "then a
miracle occurs" "grey box" technology from the developer/user's point
of view, but is perhaps more interesting as a "pay for what you use"
economic model for the business types. As someone who happens to be
both (and a blogger about both), the confusion makes for great fun.

"Private/enterprise clouds" are a necessary definition of an
"Intranet"-like (great analogy from earlier) approach towards getting
the economic benefits of "public" cloud computing, using generalized
cloud computing technology. I can live with Reuben's "elastic
computing" replacement, but what matters is that *consumers* of cloud
computing technologies are calling the use of that technology within
their four walls "private clouds" or "enterprise clouds". The
consumer knows what they want both technically and economically, and
vendors claim to fit the definition, but who fail at either, are going
to get severely burned if they try to play this game. The consumer is
going to win this one, not the vendors.

James Urquhart
The Wisdom of Clouds
http://blog.jamesurquhart.com