Cloud computing has two distinctly different meanings. The first is simple: The use of any commercial service delivered over the Internet in real time, from Amazon's EC2 to software as a service offered by the likes of Microsoft or Google.
The second meaning of cloud computing describes the architecture and technologies necessary to provide cloud services. The hot trend of the moment is the so-called private cloud, where companies in effect "try cloud computing at home" instead of turning to an Internet-based service. The idea is that you get all the scalability, metering, and time-to-market benefits of a public cloud service internally.
The concept of cloud is quite a debate interally at dataplex, and we have often mocked the private cloud as doing the same as we always have but with a new tag on the front.
Yet, despite natural scepticism, the private cloud appears to be taking shape. The technologies underlying it are pretty obvious; virtualisation and data centre automation. Chargeback metering keeps business management happy and identity-based security helps ensure only authorised people get access to the infrastructure and application resources they need.
At VMworld, HP jumped into the private cloud feet first with its CloudStart solution, which combines hardware (HP BladeSystem Matrix), software (HP Cloud Service Automation), and professional services (HP Cloud Consulting) to yield private cloud deployments within 30 days. Rather than dev and test, HP is focusing on delivering business applications as private cloud "services," from Microsoft Exchange to Oracle PeopleSoft to SAP Business Objects.
Also at VMworld,key companies were talking about their partner cloud solutions, using private clouds managed by vCloud Director, VMware's new cloud management solution.
So on the one hand, the private cloud is just another step toward the commoditisation of IT, where internal customers pick from a menu of metered services across a virtualised infrastructure, rather than specifying the nth requirement for custom deployments that tie up resources forever. On the other hand, one of the most exciting use cases for the private cloud is the ability for enterprises to establish public clouds for partners, which may accelerate business-to-business e-commerce in unanticipated ways.