Comments on: Just don't call them private clouds

Computing will take place both within and without enterprise data centers, but it's not all cloud computing. The cloud concept should be applied more carefully.

[JayFry3]

Gordon, good analysis. I agree that fuzzy definitions just make things, well, fuzzier. I've seen, though, that the internal or private cloud nomenclature actually has helped us have more relevant discussions with IT folks, given where they are with their IT systems. They are experimenting with external cloud services and would like some of those benefits in-house (and could use them now). And you're right, there's a bunch of reality that will get in the way of people jumping whole-hog into putting all in the cloud. So the concept of private cloud is useful (even if the name continues to get beaten up). My summary on this: http://datacenterdialog.blogspot.com/2009/01/are-internal-clouds-bogus.html

And, I'm definitely behind the "thinkable" idea you mention of interoperability and mobility between enterprise and service provider. Hybrid or federated clouds, though, will either have to be pretty simplistic to start or won't make much progress until there has been more advancement in both the internal and external cloud capabilities. And, there will be some interesting stuff needed to manage the movement between the two. Policy-based, automated, etc. Last link (I promise), this time on the timing of hybrid clouds: http://datacenterdialog.blogspot.com/2009/01/publicprivate-hybrid-cloud-computing.html

[lmasanti]

quote:
"then the "cloud" moniker shouldn't be slapped onto evolutionary changes to the way we run applications."

Or, maybe, you can go deeper in the "cloud methaphor."
Why call them "private" if there is a rich tradition in meteorology?

From Mac OS X Dictionary:

"cirrus |?sir?s|
noun ( pl. cirri |?sir??; ?sir?|)
1 cloud forming wispy filamentous tufted streaks (?mare's tails?) at high altitude, usually 16,500?45,000 feet (5?13 km)."

"cumulus |?kyo?my?l?s|
noun ( pl. -li |-?l?; -l?|) Meteorology
a cloud forming rounded masses heaped on each other above a flat base at fairly low altitude."

"nimbus |?nimb?s|
noun ( pl. -bi |-?b?| or -buses )
1 a luminous cloud or a halo surrounding a supernatural being or a saint.
? a light, aura, color, etc., that surrounds someone or something.
2 a large gray rain cloud : [as adj. ] nimbus clouds."
(Take this as a "fuzzy" definition: 1 "luminous cloud" 2 "grey cloud")

[ghaff]

Hi Jay,
I certainly understand the appeal of the private cloud notion. And I understand why folks who are used to selling gear to enterprises (and less so to service providers) are pushing it so. I know I'm being a bit of a purist but, if it ultimately doesn't really matter economically whether computing happens inside or outside the firewall, then the big picture cloud computing metaphor is a bit of a bust.

And, yes, the whole automagical interoperability thing is a ways out. Bob Sutor put up a post today on some of the standards he thinks will be needed.

[adamopolis]

Amidst all the debate (and hype) around cloud computing I have never heard any vaguely plausible answer to the problem of interoperability standards that you mention above. In fact it rarely even seems to get considered at all. For example:

If I have an application running on an IBM Cloud, how do I move that to Amazons Elastic Compute Cloud? Or if I have data in Googles Cloud (in BigTable) how do I move that to a HP Cloud service??

The current answer of course, is that you cant, you are completely locked in. Has any one heard of any standards being drafted or discussed to address any of these things? At the moment all the current/likely cloud providers are following exactly the same walled garden model that telcos and ISPs started with, the only difference being that cloud interoperability is orders of magnitude more complex - I really cant see it being solved within 10 years, if ever.

and surely that's enough to kill the "pure" cloud model dead right away??

Am I ill informed or being too pessimistic??

[ghaff]

The short answer is that we're still in pretty early days in this whole process. Standards tend to lag, not lead. (At least the useful ones do.) There is some discussion starting to happen though. IBM's Bob Sutor actually just put a post up that's a good summary: http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=3321

[jamesurquhart]

Let's not forget that you are pretty much locked in to your own enterprise data center today. If Amazon EC2 offered capacity at a fraction of what you could do yourself (which isn't necessarily true today), then could you jump on that opportunity? I think Gordon's analysis above betrays that you couldn't.

So choosing where to deploy a green field application becomes a measure of TCO, which may or may not go in the cloud's favor.

Besides, trust is the biggest issue enterprises face when looking to the cloud. I've made the case recently that trust will be the number one issue in cloud computing for the next year (or two, or three). There is no way you would look to leverage cloud economics unless you trusted the providers first.

I expect to see both lock-in and trust issues fall one by one over the next few years.

[adamopolis]

"early days"? in some ways that is of course true, but the fundamental ideas of cloud computing have been around for a long time now....

Bob seems to have a very pragmatic view of standards in this space (which is to be applauded) but again, there seems to be very little real activity here: no W3 or IEEE working groups established and there don't even seem to be any corporate initiatives either (like MS and IBM basically jump starting the web services space when they sat down and sketched out standards that were then quickly adopted by the rest of the industry) I cant think of any other technology development that has got so far without any meaningful development or discussion of standards....

Anyway, I'll get down off my soap box now :-)

[Len Bullard]

I disagree. I think Sutor's view of standards is the view of a global services provider, not a technological product vendor. Cloud computing makes sense from the utility point of view but that point of view can be wrong. Try to indemnify a system or service without also indemifying the service provider. The Warner Brothers/YouTube dust up is a good example of what happens when third parties make assumptions about their rights based on licensing to which they are not privvy to the terms and conditions. If they make those assumptions without being explicitly aware of the practices of the industry providing the content, they can find themselves taken down without recourse.

The utility model favors the big-server-center vendors precisely because they can afford the licensing and because they can afford a large surface area of skills and talents when working in mixed platform environments. That is the fly in Sutor's ointment. Open source has a high TCO of skill sets and standards can't be left until a winner emerges. The 3D virtual worlds market is a good example. Standards exist. IBM ignores them claiming it isn't time for standards. The only beneficiaries are the IBM clients or proteges such as Second Life. Once again, qui bono? In this case, only the services vendors and their cloud or keiretsu.

Cloud computing works in the sense that the Internet works. As a business model, it works only for those who don't have to risk the indemnity issues for services. I think we are being taken for another ride on the Web Myth Train that tends to load people up and take them some place without any guarantee they can come back. That said and putting the economies of scale that cause the network to turn into megacenters, part of what is missing is the legal framework that enables cloud computing to be reliable computing.

[Groucho6]

As long as people like Comcast are squeezing bandwidth from customers and other major providers are poised to follow suit, any technology which demands the end user spend more of his finite, shrinking bandwidth resource is doomed to failure.

[jamesurquhart]

Gordon,

Excellent insight. I will simply agree to disagree on this, as I just don't agree that the core value proposition of cloud computing is simply "someone else does it". To me, the "cloud" comes from the abstractness of the resources, and the self-service network-based methods of acquiring and operating those resources. I don't subscribe to "cloud equals Internet".

So for me, the "Internet/Intranet" metaphore works perfectly. Same technology disruption, but applied to a limited scope.

That being said, if you read Chuck's post carefully, he is changing the definition of "private cloud" to represent "within enterprise trust boundaries" rather than "behind enterprise firewalls". That is an interesting distinction, as it allows "private clouds" to run entirely outside of enterprise-owned infrastructure, as long as the enterprise has the *illusion* that they are managing their own data center/platforms/applications.

It's a concept that I can get behind.

[ghaff]

Hi James,
Good to see you in California. I agree that there are architectural aspects to cloud computing that you can think of as a sort of Web-based SOA that are probably a better way of composing applications (and therefore have an economic benefit in and of themselves). I actually don't think that we collectively have a particularly good understanding of the economies of scale and multi-tenancy relating to cloud. In short, that argument for cloud computing may simply be wrong--at least as it relates to many business apps at large enterprises. It would be a bit funny if it turned out that cloud computing is a generally good thing but we were marching to it for at least partly the wrong reasons.

[rcardona2k]

I agree that 'private' is overloaded as in something like a virtual private network. James is right about the circle of trust concept. There's a lot of work to move from today's enterprise (static, siloed, locked-in, expensive, manual) to a trusted enterprise cloud (dynamic, virtualized, cross-premise, automated and self-service). Murphy's Law will catchup and create a whole new set of problems in the latter nirvana also.

[samjohnston]

Hear hear! Cloud computing is all about hiding complexity and economies of scale. If you build your own next-generation datacenter and bolt an Amazon EC2 style API on top of it then you have successfully concealed complexity from your internal users, but someone in your organisation still has to care about it and you're still paying them to keep the thing alive. This centralisation and consolidation is the evolution of virtualisation, not the revolution of cloud computing.

To reuse the electricity analogy, the only places we're seeing generators still being deployed are backups for mission critical infrastructure (datacenters, hospitals, etc.) and in those few places that remain off grid. Perhaps the few datacenters that remain in 10 years will be deployed for the same reasons - backups (of data rather than service) and off-grid deployments.

It's worth noting too that most of the proponents of this oxymoron are peddlers of "I can't believe it's not cloud", and usually aren't shy of squeezing in healthy doses of FUD about trust, security, etc.

Sam

[ghaff]

Exactly. We may well decide that the electric utility analogy is a flawed one, but if "The Big Switch" storyline is fundamentally correct it's hard for me to see how private clouds are clouds--at least from an economic model perspective.