Cutting through the Haze of Cloud vs Cloud Computing
Posted by Ian Huynh on September 2, 2010
There is no shortage of discussion surrounding cloud computing. According to a report by Apollo Research, cloud computing-related media coverage increased by 18 percent from Q1 to Q2 in 2010. The report found more than 28,000 stories which included information about the cloud.
In spite of all this, there remains huge confusion. Let’s take the meaning of ‘cloud’ versus ‘cloud computing.’ Same thing or different? One of my colleagues was taken to task the other day by an analyst who said what Hubspan is doing is NOT cloud computing.
While some define cloud computing as all types of cloud solutions, such as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) or Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), as well as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), other people still see cloud computing as only the computing operations or infrastructural components, or what many call utility computing or virtual servers on the Internet.
However, most folks are just throwing all of the “as a Service” platforms into the “cloud computing” pie. In an InfoWorld article, the writer says, “utility-style infrastructure providers are part of the mix, but so are SaaS (software as a service) providers such as Salesforce.com.
If we look at this discussion from a technical level, a cloud infrastructure offering such as Amazon EC2 is fundamentally different than a cloud development environment such as Microsoft Azure and is different yet from a SaaS application, like Salesforce.com. In each of these cases, the requirements and architectures are different.
When you boil it all up to a higher technical level, it is possible that a user of Salesforce.com indirectly uses some piece of the cloud development environment (e.g. Force.com) that in turn leverages something that belongs to a cloud infrastructure (e.g. VMForce).
While the cloud versus cloud computing discussion might be considered hair splitting for some, it really depends on your strata when discussing the different layers of cloud computing. At Hubspan, we built a “net native” platform that is single instance, multi-tenant architecture – what in today’s vernacular, we would call a cloud-based integration platform that is basically a SaaS application.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what it’s called. What matters is whether or not the application or solution solves a business or IT challenge successfully.
Tags: cloud, Cloud Computing, SaaS
No Comments »
No comments yet.