Revised Oct 21, 2011

Private versus Public Cloud Solutions
Let’s face it, there are BILLIONS of dollars invested in existing IT infrastructure. As more and more enterprise vendors step into the cloud arena, will business in general migrate to the public cloud or opt instead to keep much of their investment in legacy code and custom applications in-house via a private cloud?

The future of cloud computing is up in the air (pun intended)
At this point, we don’t really know how cloud technology is going to shake out. Even if cloud technology gets huge, there’s likely to be a split between private and public clouds for the foreseeable decade. I think as the industry matures, you’ll see commodity services migrate to the public cloud and mission-critical stuff linger in a private cloud.

OK, so what is cloud computing?
Essentially, cloud computing is simply another way of delivering computing resources to run websites and web applications. It allows clients to scale their operations, horizontally and vertically, based on the demands of their users, while ensuring that there are adequate resources to support their apps. You can think of it as technology services delivered on-demand.

Traditional web hosting services are offered in packages with set limits on disk space and data transfer, so as traffic fluctuates, data and transfer needs vary resulting in excess, unused capacity during lean times.

Who could benefit from Cloud Services?
Essentially, everyone could benefit from cloud technology. Businesses that experience seasonal spikes, especially eCommerce retailers, where 80+ percent of their business peaks during holiday seasons, are prime candidates for cloud services.Cloud computing offers those businesses enough services to meet their increased traffic demands, then the option to scale back after the holidays, aligning their operating costs with revenue.

Taking the lead from the BIG vendors
Nearly all of the BIG vendors, from Microsoft to HP and IBM to CISCO, are talking cloud, with most listing their top two priorities as virtualization and cloud computing (virtualization is a cloud enabler). Google and Amazon already host public clouds while vendors like EMC are promoting solutions that virtualize existing servers and storage (private cloud).

Types of private versus public cloud solutions
As the following graphic from Microsoft highlights, there are choices to both private and public cloud services. Of course, these are not all inclusive. In the following months, I’ll address different cloud scenarios, demystifying some of the confusion about what cloud services really offer

On this epidsode of Sami, Stepping up to the Cloud

In one of my earlier articles – “Disaster Recovery Strategies,” I talked about cold, warm and hot sites and the pros and cons of each. While financially justifying a DR investment has always been a major challenge, especially when you’re trying to convince people to spend money on something they hoped they’d never have to use, with cloud-based products, costs drop dramatically.

Planning a disaster recovery and business continuity solution is – so much easier today, from risk analysis to implementation time. You still need assess all the “what ifs.” What if you have a flood (and as I write this, they are predicting high flood levels here again because of all the snow up North this winter), a fire, an earthquake or a severe wind storm? We had a wind storm in St. Louis a few years back that took out thousands of trees and cut power to a large portion of the metropolitan area for a week. What if a disgruntled employee sabotaged your account receivables?

So you’ve exposed risk – what next? You need to have a plan to mitigate those risks. How likely are each and what impact will they have your business? Even in a cloud solution, if your business is critically impacted by being down for even a few minutes, you might still consider ‘hot’ in the cold, warm & hot solution, for that specific aspect of your business.

Dealing with natural disasters is – the sweet spot for cloud solutions. For those risks that aren’t critical in nature, why build out a cold or warm solution, when you can take advantage of others work and infrastructure? Cloud based solutions allow you to redirect that DR investment to what you do best – drive your business.

I read an interesting article predicting the ‘evaporation’ of most current data centers into the cloud, at a much faster rate than most suspect.  It went on in-depth to describe how most data centers were inefficient.

The underlying reason given for widespread data center demise was the spread of two competing 4G wireless standards, WiMAX and LTE, delivering broadband Internet to remote locations resulting in true mobile broadband connectivity to cars, busses and trains.

I, for one, welcome upgrades in technology. Coming from the days of NO Internet to shades of acoustic couplers and 56K dialup connections, I now enjoy 10Mbps connectivity, up and down at my home.

Data centers are a brick and mortar technology resistant to evaporation.

The cost to build out a data center ranges in the millions of dollars. The difference in capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expenditures (OPEX) essentially is that CAPEX is tightly tied to asset depreciation (brick and mortar). While OPEX relates more closely to cloud computing, and is typically easier to dial up and down, the existing data center industry continues to strive and grow.

When the article was written, the price per barrel of oil was $140.00. With our current global recession, the price of energy has shifted dramatically.

What I envision are widespread advancements on both fronts, data centers and cloud computing.