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I’m with Werner
Friday, September 25, 2009 by admin
Regarding public vs private Clouds: what he said.
I have a real problem with the positioning of infrastructure that you buy, install and own yourself as “private cloud” – even if it is the kind of infrastructure that Cloud providers might install in their own data centers. The problem I have is that Cloud computing *has* to have edges around it that we can point to, that clearly show where Cloud ends and other computing models begin. Otherwise we end up with a situation, probably at some point in the not-too-distant future, where “Cloud is everything”.
I think the only place where it makes sense to draw that line is around the product v service distinction. Namely that Cloud Computing is a model of service provision and consumption, and of provider-ownership and provider-management. And namely that Cloud Computing is expressly *not* a model of technology product ownership. If you’re buying products then you’re buying “Cloudy infrastructure” – you’re not “buying Cloud”. The technology is the enabler, but it’s not sufficient.
Where this leaves us here at MWD regarding the distinction between “public cloud” and “private cloud” is that the difference relates to accessibility: public clouds deliver resources that are universally accessible; private clouds deliver resources where access is restricted to those with the right authorisation.
I’m with Werner on this one.
[Now, of course, you can imagine in a very large organisation - within national Governments, for example - situations where shared services units might purchase "Cloudy infrastructure" and then deliver computing platform services to numerous Government departments, charging them for resource usage. There, those individual departments will be using a private Cloud. But again, the model is about utility-billed service provision.]
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