Enterprise users reconfiguring cloud models

For quite some time, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and other as-a-service models have been the leading solutions in the cloud computing industry. According to a recent No Jitter report, enterprise cloud users are frustrated by these systems for defining the cloud and claim that any as-a-service model is not really a form of cloud computing.

Instead, these users are considering as-a-service products resources that can be leveraged as part of cloud computing solutions. The issue is not with the relevance of these solutions, but with how they are considered the core types of cloud computing when, in reality, other technologies define what the cloud really is, the report said.

Rather than focusing on as-a-service models for understanding what cloud computing is and how many types of clouds really exist, the report said enterprise cloud users have narrowed cloud forms to two types - virtualization-centric platforms and service-centric systems.

In virtualization-centric cloud models, businesses began by adopting application-specific servers and other virtualized systems networked together using GUI technology to connect virtual devices and unify an IT model that had been disparate for years. This model let businesses improve their IT efficiency and deploy applications and other technologies through a virtual infrastructure tied together into a cloud.

Now, enterprise customers using the virtualization-centric models are branching out into hybrid cloud models, the report said, and attaching their internal network of connected machines to a public cloud solution to improve efficiency and leverage applications and other resources more flexibly while keeping critical systems on the internal clouds. Other movements in the virtualization-centric cloud include data center consolidation and improvements to IT infrastructure, according to the report.

In service-centric enterprise cloud solutions, the focus is more heavily weighted toward the cloud vendor. The report said service-centric cloud users are often businesses that essentially attached themselves to a single cloud vendor and have used that relationship to obtain applications and computing resources.

In many cases, the report said, businesses using the service-centric approach are focusing more on the business initiatives related to the cloud, and less on the IT side of the technology. As a result, more of these organizations are making cloud decisions with cooperative teams that include both IT and business strategy professionals to determine which services to adopt.

Overall, the report said this form of dividing the cloud into two models instead of focusing on as-a-service cloud resource distribution is good for service providers. Businesses using virtualization-centric approaches are currently more open to deploying IaaS resources within their cloud model, as they have built a stable internal cloud, understand the technology and are ready to trust a third-party service provider with the advanced resource distribution model. Service providers benefit from service-centric cloud users because many major IT vendors have quickly moved to maximize cloud services.

The report concludes with a note that both virtualization-centric and enterprise-centric customers said they see a convergence of public and private cloud computing on the horizon. Because most businesses already use applications that can be deployed in both settings, having them converge into a singe solution that leverages advantages from both is a reasonable expectation, the report said.

According to a recent TechTarget report, application delivery forms the core of cloud computing technology regardless of what model businesses use to leverage the technology. While the report acknowledged that businesses realize the importance of virtualization as the foundational technology that will support cloud computing solutions, it said the success of virtualization and other technological initiatives related to the cloud will increasingly be measured based on how well the solution can deliver applications.