Demystifying the Myths of Cloud Computing

There has been a lot of buzz around Cloud computing these days. Almost every

IT vendor claims to have some kind of product or service for the Cloud. Some

have even created terms like 'private cloud' and 'hybrid cloud' to add to the

complexity. So, what is Cloud computing and what does it mean for businesses,

governments and organizations of all sizes?

A simple way to explain cloud computing is that instead of buying, owning,

and maintaining your own datacenters or servers, you buy the compute power and

storage services from third party infrastructure providers and leave the

management and maintenance of that infrastructure to them. You interact with

those resources via the Internet, and you can grow and shrink capacity instantly

without spending capital on them. So it feels like all the computing resources

are in a Cloud. For an offering to truly be 'Cloud Computing', it needs to have

the following five characteristics:

No Capital Expenditure: You do not have to spend capital expenses on

servers or data centers. You get to turn capital expense to variable expense,

which is a huge advantage for companies that either do not have a lot of capital

or those who simply do not want to tie capital to infrastructure.



Pay for what you use: There is no upfront fee, no contract or commitment. You
only pay for what you actually consume and have the flexibilities to choose the

pricing model that best meets your business requirement.

True Elastic Capacity: You can scale both up and down, and not sit on

unneeded, excess capacity. Also, a Cloud allows your applications and your

business to seamlessly grow as quickly as you need. When you no longer need

thatcapacity you can shed it just as quickly.

Fast Time to Market: You can move much more quickly with whatever

projects you have. You can spin up large amounts of server capacity in minutes

instead of waiting for days or weeks for capacity to be assigned to you.

Focus on Your Core Competence: You can take scarce engineering

resources and instead of applying them to running infrastructure which is

undifferentiated for most companies, you can spend time on projects that add

value to your customer offerings or areas that differentiate your business. If

one or more of the above benefits do not exist, then it is not really Cloud

computing. Let's cut through the noise and demystify a few of the common myths

revolving around 'Cloud'.

Myth #1 - Cloud isn't secure. For any cloud provider, security is

always the top priority. Most companies don't have the luxury of dedicating

resources on security, unlike cloud provider such as Amazon Web Services which

have been doing this for years. Cloud uses all the same security tactics and

strategies that enterprise data centers have used for the last 30 years, and in

fact invest a lot more. Companies found that when they put their infrastructure

on cloud platform, their security actually improves.

Myth #2 - Cost is the only cloud advantage. The reality is cost is

just one of them, the more important advantage is the ability to move more

quickly and accelerate time-to-market. If you ask software development engineers

at enterprises, how long does it take to get a server if they want to do an

experiment or just expand a project? The answers range from four weeks to three

months just for a server. That is frustrating for engineers and it stifles

innovation. With a cloud you are able to spin up large amounts of server

capacity in minutes to expedite development work.

Myth #3 - You should move all infrastructure to the cloud in one fell

swoop. If you are a start-up, that is what you should do. It makes no sense to

build on top of the old world model of buying infrastructure that you may or may

not need. For enterprises that have new development, it is easy to build it on

top of the cloud and quickly take advantage of those benefits. For enterprises

with many legacy applications and systems, it is not advisable to move

everything at once. Most enterprises move more methodically by picking a diverse

set of initial applications to try as proofs of concepts in the cloud. They run

them from a few weeks to a few months to see how the cloud is different and

understand how to operate in the cloud before moving more of their applications.

This will be followed by a 12-to-24-month migration plan. Amazon Web Services is

doing this with many enterprises now.

Myth #4 - I can get all the benefits of the cloud with my own private

cloud. The reality is when you really dig into the details of these private or

internal clouds, they are usually very expensive fixed cost, private

installation of infrastructure which lacks all the key benefits of the cloud.

Companies that build these types of internal clouds still own all the capital

expense at the data centers and incur ongoing high maintenance costs. Companies

should consider the notion of what really is private cloud because it is a term

with 'cloud' in it but lacks all the key benefits of the cloud.

Cloud computing enables IT to be truly the business enabler. It allows

companies to focus their capital and resources on innovations to accelerate

their time to market, rather than running and maintaining the undifferentiating

heavy lifting of infrastructure. Think about what had happened over 100 years

ago when most companies generated their own electricity. They had to install and

operate generator in their premise to generate electricity to run the factory.

Over time the electricity grid evolved, the economies of the grid were just too

good for companies to continue running their own electricity generator and it

eventually became obsolete. This same analogy could happen to computing. In

fullness of time, very few companies will own their data centers and those that

do own it will have tiny footprints. That is because the economies of the cloud

are too great for any forward-looking companies to ignore.

Dr Werner Vogels, Chief Technology Officer of Amazon