Cloud Computing as business enabler

Every supplier of ICT services and tools used nowadays the term cloud computing as a business enabler in offers. But just like the weather there are many variation and characteristics. So it needs an ICT meteorologist to see the sky through the clouds. All things considered, cloud computing is the successor of utility computing, and not as revolutionary as some vendors would have us believe. It is primarily a delivery model that goes beyond the binary choice between “do it yourself”' or “outsourcing”.

But it takes a different view of the infrastructure than we actually used these days. So whether the flight into outsourcing is actually taken on economic grounds is questionable. Due to missing possibility to weigh costs and benefits of a service (chain). At best, there is a tradeoff on the basis of cover but it is usually for organizational reasons. That's like trying to outsource your problems where Cloud Computing is only about technology.

Same story

The primary technology elements, and widely used within organizations, of these Cloud offers are Internet and Virtualization. But it is an illusion to think that these increase costs and prevent for irritation. We should know by now that technology doesn’t align IT to the business, but processes and people do.  Virtualization didn’t stop the server sprawl it just only shifts CapEx to OpEx. 

Experience shows that by the absence of 'charge back' the number of systems in the infrastructure continues to increase. Because virtualization provide 'galvanic' decoupling, project teams don't need to purchase hardware anytime.  Whose processes are not in order, and miss a certain level of maturity according to the Gartner model, will not find the benefit of cloud computing. That's only introducing a new server sprawl with the only is difference is at the location. 

Dynamical infrastructure
It is not inconceivable that 'orphan clouds' arise when tactical level decide to tap functionality from the Cloud. As most IT shops are driven by cost reduction the demand for IT is still increasing. But often these separate entities don't live long and need to be reabsorbed into the architecture again. And it often rains at the operational level so eventually the circle of Business-IT Alignment is round again. So who decide without an complete understanding of the true value of ICT will sooner or later be confronted with new challenges. So let’s look at some, but not limitative  charateristics of Cloud Computing:           

• Agility of resources to rapidly and inexpensively respond to new business demands.
• Multi-tenancy to enable sharing of resources and costs across a large pool of users
• Reliability by using multiple redundant sites, which makes Cloud Computing suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery.

A dynamic infrastructure is only usefull if application stacks can benefit this functionality. Adding CPU or memory resources to applications that are I/O intensive wouldn’t make sense. Of course we can remedy this by using a scale out strategy but this is not the most cost effective manner. Multi-tenancy is an architectural principle where reusability is the starting point. Instead of copying the base stack over and over again as we do with server virtualization it’s more about rationalizing applications to base functionalities.  

Locked & stocked into the corner
I will not dispute virtualization and Cloud Computing can help as delivery model to solve business continuity and loadbalancing workloads for example more efficient. But these concepts are not new and require not necessarily the concept of Cloud Computing. As moving from 'private' Cloud to 'public' Cloud, also known as 'Cloud bursting' need the same technologies to be used at both sides it's finally about portability. Suppliers of Cloud solutions don't tell that part of the story and focus only at technology to push customer into the new trap.

As we've got  different  hypervisors the Cloud solutions from Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others all use different 'stacks'. Meaning portability between these Clouds isn't always obvious and the new hype lure us quitely into some proprietary. Those who decide to outsource loses its autonomy because many hosted solutions are only a interpretation of technology. As Ramnath K. Chellappa already stated in 1997's is Cloud Computing: "A computer paradigm in which the boundaries rather be determined by the economic aspect than the technical limitations." Even Cloud Computing isn't commodity yet it will afterall be just as common like Internet. 

But who choices binairy today will be locked into a 'corner' tomorrow. 'Cause many suppliers use the term Cloud Computing only as business enabler and don't offer the freedom to move your applications between the technology of them or competitors. Even when there are no technical boundaries left anymore most likely the contracts prevent you to benefit the market.