Do “Private Clouds” make sense?

I actually should better ask “is a Private Cloud really Cloud Computing?”

Quite frankly i do not think that what Gartner and many others call a <Private Cloud> is anything near Cloud Computing. Agreed there is a trend towards virtualization and this makes perfect sense for large corporations – but Cloud Computing for me implies that the user (and even the IT department) does not know where the application or service is running and where data is stored.

The reason to use a Private instead of the Public Cloud is most of the times security related, i.e. I want to assure that sensitive data is not leaving the company in order to reduce risk or ensure compliancy with corporate policy or laws. Distributing the available internal computing power and the available storage across many users, apps, departments and locations is more or like a task of clever load-balancing. Some of the technology is probably similar to the one used in the Cloud, but all this is still very much in the control of corporate IT.
The fact that I am sure that the data does not leave the companies firewall shows that I always know where it actually (and physically) is. Isn’t this is an antagonism to the concept of Cloud Computing?

Technorati Tags: Cloud Computing,Private Cloud,Public Cloud

Cloud Computing is the new Grid Computing?

Comparing the idea of Grid computing to the new Buzzword “Cloud Computing” shows that - while the basic idea is the same - there are major differences in the two concepts.

One difference is obviously the intended usage. Grid Computing was planned for (single) applications with high demand in processing power while the idea of Could Computing is using such a grid on an internet scale to balance the load of many applications running in parallel.

This requires virtualization in order to provide the sandbox for each application:

Virtual Appliances are ready-to-run software packages that are pre configured on a virtual OS (or multiple ones), delivering a quick and easy to use solution for a certain part of the business. In my eyes, this is very appealing to all kinds (and all sizes) of corporations that do not want to go through the hassle of installing a local IT and facing problems when their business is growing (or shrinking) fast…

The main differentiator to SaaS is the Multi-Instance vs. Multitenancy. The control over a SaaS delivered platform is limited, while a virtual appliance allows full control in the VM boundaries.

Let’s hope that the Open Virtual Machine Format (OVM) will establish a standard that allows to create portable VMs that can move form local IT to the Cloud (and back) if required.

VMWare already introduced a concept called “vApp” that allows to package a set of configured VMs that compose one application and are managed as a unit.

Interesting times ahead…

Technorati Tags: Cloud Computing,Grid Computing,Virtual Appliance,Open Virtual Machine Format,OVM,vApp