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The
Hype
- Imagine having all of
your IT, data, applications & processing power, in some nebulous cloud
where you seem to have no real control, security,
reliability or ownership. It almost sounds too good to be true w/
things like minimal initial investment, preconfigured applications and offloaded responsibility
for the software & hardware infrastructure. Why are all of the big
guys either coming out with it,
like EMC, Amazon, Nasuni, Google & HDS, or trying to scare
you away from it, like SUN and almost anybody needing to
write an article. APIs are being written, encription is being integrated into
Cloud Server nodes & magazines are telling backward countries that, since
they have no existing storage infrastructure, they should think about starting
with the cloud! What is the real story? Cloud Apps - Cloud computing runs the gamut from simple,
free VMs running on someone else's computer to scalable
and often virtualized resources delivered as a service over the
Internet. Acronyms like Iaas, PaaS & SaaS are becoming part of our daily language and let
you run the gamut from creating you
own enviornment to having someone else do everything for
you. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control
over, the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports
them. Cloud computing services often provide common business
applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the
software and data are stored on the servers. Services available
range from on-demand computing power, email archiving, file serving
and BACKUP ( the Cloud's Killer App), to
any custom solutions you might
require while mitigating most of the initial investment. These services
are provided by companies like us, Amazon, Google, IBM, Dell, etc.
and sold & configured through channel partners like
Even Enterprises. We can have our engineers provision inexpensive capacity
and configure virtualized apps to run your requirements in the
cloud. Cloud Storage - Although cloud storage seems like a new concept, it gained early popularity with Web2.0 startups looking to outsource storage administration and was originally delivered as a service. This concept evolved and the industry now embraces three types of cloud storage, public, private & hybrid. These Tier 2 & 3 storage solutions may offer significent savings but many factors must be considered before choosing one that's right for you. Coupling inexpensive storage servers with software that creates large, highly reliable, scalable & available clustered filesystems allows for a new paradiem on 100 terabyte to multi petabyte storage pools. Usage patterns, security & application requirements, performance, cost, etc. will determine whether cloud storage, public or private, is a good fit for you. Companies like Hitachi, Amazon, Caringo, EMC, us, etc. are leading this new wave. | |
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