Report: Maturation solidified cloud technology in 2010

Cloud computing has been a somewhat ubiquitous technology since the early stages of its development because experts struggled to clearly define its complex attributes. According to a recent report from CIO.com, 2010 was marked by the cloud computing becoming a mainstream technological movement. As a result, the technology has been clarified in many ways because companies have closely witnessed its development.

One of the lessons learned about cloud computing, the report said, is that external and internal clouds are relatively similar. As a result, companies face a similar risk whether they are building a cloud within their firewall or through a hosting provider outside of the company network. Gartner's Chris Wolf told CIO.com this trend has led companies to embrace the hybrid cloud, as they see minimal need for exclusively private or purely public clouds. Wolf explained private clouds offer some benefits because sharing is limited in the environment, but they also sacrifice the flexibility of public options, limiting the cloud's potential.

The report also said 2010 taught businesses that cloud computing does not completely separate companies from their sophisticated IT infrastructure. One of the cloud's most important benefits was its ability to remove the necessity of internal IT architecture by separating the applications and IT services from the system's hardware. The report said this promise is paying dividends, but the cloud still requires close monitoring of servers.

Vince DiMemmo, general manager of cloud and IT services at a cloud vendor, told CIO.com running cloud computing solutions require servers, storage solutions, networking tools and application delivery systems that are optimized to work faster and more effectively. Furthermore, stability has to be increased to prevent systems from becoming jittery. As a result, the end-user hardware and IT management tasks are reduced substantially, but many IT tasks are also more complex.

According to the report, the industry made it clear in 2010 that attention to deal will be an important part of successful cloud computing models in coming years. IDC analyst Gary Chen told the news source virtualization solutions can create an increased level of complexity that requires close attention to detail. When companies virtualize their servers, they create a complicated web of operating systems and applications that run on one piece of hardware while also owning their own virtual server designation. As a result, Chen said managing details is important because all of the virtualized systems need to have access to the network in a well-distributed and flexible manner.

John Rymer, analyst for Forrester, told CIO.com the need to closely manage details in virtualized systems is making virtual I/O technologies more important. Virtual I/O separates I/O, memory and other server components from one another in an effort to distribute system resources and avoid network bottlenecks.

The report also said 2010 brought clarity to how clouds are established. Essentially, clouds are built on other clouds because the technology is typically established using advanced virtualization tools to distribute resources on virtualized servers. As a result, clouds are typically constructed on systems in hosted, virtualized or on-premise data centers.

A recent Computerworld article labeled 2010 as the "year of the cloud" because companies have increased their investments in the technology and new levels of clarity have been established around the various public and private cloud offerings on the market. The report said every aspect of cloud computing matured in some way during 2010, with SaaS growing substantially and gaining significant momentum for adoption in the coming year. The report said IaaS clouds also grew as companies increasingly deploy private clouds.