There is no cloud. It’s just someone else’s computer.
Chris Watterston
The Cloud (PaaS, SaaS, IaaS, …, etc.) is a stablished as solution nowadays.
According to where is the hardware, it’s told that there’re three types of cloud implementation:
- public: your solution it’s on provider datacenter
- private: your cloud it’s on your own datacenter(s)
- hybrid: your solution is on both; at external at provider’s datacenter and in your datacenter. Important, you are able to move apps, services, VM’s from one to another
Note: the same terms are used to describe if your solution is public in the Internet, or closed only for your company (private) or a mixed one (hybrid). So, let me insists, I’m describing where is your solution (hard + software). I’m not refering here to who is able to use it.
Ussually I miss another variable that impacts a lot: are you going to deploy your cloud solution in a vendor lock-in implementation or don’t? Many cloud companies offers their solution in the three environments (I think that Amazon only offers a full non on-site solution).
PROS: A ready to use solution provided by any vendor has advantages: easy and fast deploy, integration with other products (for instance: As an exemple, if we just have a look to Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), there’s a plenty of storage provider with S3 compatible solutions: EMC2, IBM, Veritas, Oracle (it seems that just for backup solution)).
CONS: Your footprint is that concept named vendor lock-in. Once they got you, they may charge you hidden cost and it may be painful to migrate from one cloud solution to another. Plus, on daily work you’re limited about the things you may see, modify, manage, or analyze if anythings fails. Think about this cloud infrastructure with renting a flat: there’s a landlord, you got everything ready for you as soon as you come into the flat, but… you couldn’t change anything in the house ’cause it is not yours home.
I prefer a hybrid solution based on open standards.
CONS: It costs more to get things done, but when you get it you control and decides architechture, services, and many times you may manage your resources, you are not out of the workshop while the vendor manage your solution and you don’t know what’s hoing on or what has happened during a failure. Obviously there’s a footprint too, it is not a ready-to-use solution.
PROS: On the other hand, you’re more free to manage and decide. More; hybrid is going to be the solution because the companies requires an agilty (growing, moving resources, etc.) that only can be satisfied by defining from the scratch a hybrid implementation.
Source: I found the author of the sentence There is no cloud. It’s just someone else’s computer. in the Command Line Heroes podcast Crack the Cloud_Open and it has makes me share here those ideas that I agree with.
