Cloud computing has been indispensable over the past year and a half, giving organizations access to the applications, data, storage and communications tools they needed to remain functional with remote operations. Yet despite its growing strategic importance, the Cloud remains something of a mystery to a great many people. 

The fact that it draws its name from the cloud symbol used to represent the Internet on a flow chart created confusion from the get-go. In one often-cited study from a few years back, most Americans said they thought cloud computing actually exists somewhere in the sky, like satellites, and is therefore affected by stormy weather.

Of course, cloud comprehension has improved as the technology has become more mainstream. There’s a broader understanding that the cloud is actually a network of data centers that house thousands of servers along with vast numbers of storage systems, network switches and routers. The largest public cloud providers, Amazon, Microsoft and Google, collectively operate about 600 of these hyperscale data centers around the world to accommodate demand for their cloud services.

Most people now can tell you that the cloud enables the delivery of a wide range of applications and services over the Internet. However, that accurate but oversimplified explanation has often led to misperceptions and, occasionally, outright deception.

Cloud Washing

Over the years, many vendors have contributed to confusion about the cloud through the practice of “cloud washing,” a tactic in which they rebrand old products to leverage the marketing buzz around the cloud. For example, Oracle founder Larry Ellison once told the Wall Street Journal that his company simply “redefined cloud computing to include everything we already do.” This effort, he said, required Oracle to do little more than “change the wording of some of our ads.”

In a typical cloud washing scenario, a vendor might host their existing packaged software in a virtualized data center and allow customers to access it over the Internet. That might be a useful service, but it isn’t the cloud. In addition to Internet delivery, the National Institute of Technology and Standards (NIST) says true cloud services have these defining characteristics:

• On-demand self-service. Customers can provision capabilities such as server time and storage as needed without human interaction from a service provider. 
• Resource pooling. The cloud provider pools computing resources to serve multiple consumers in a multitenant model, with different physical and virtual resources assigned and reassigned dynamically according to demand. Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth and virtual machines.
• Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be rapidly provisioned or deprovisioned — in some cases automatically — to meet business needs. To the customer, the services available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.
• Metered services. Cloud systems feature a pay-per-use structure in which customers have access to potentially unlimited resources but only pay for what they use. Resource usage is monitored, measured and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer.

The ability to gain on-demand access to scalable computing resources has fundamentally changed the way IT services are sourced and delivered. Despite its widespread adoption, however, the cloud is still not well understood in many organizations. Misconceptions can result in cost overruns, missed expectations and increased management complexity.

Rahi’s cloud consultants can work with your team to dispel some of the myths about cloud and help ensure you develop a cloud strategy that best suits your business requirements. In our next post, we’ll compare and contrast the different types of cloud services you can choose from, and take a closer look at several distinct deployment models.

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