Chapter 1

Discovering the Fundamentals of Your Computing Environment

In This Chapter

Deconstructing cloud concepts

Discovering resource pools/cloud models and services

Evaluating the role of the data center

Finding out how the public cloud fits and when the private cloud shines

How quickly things change. Cloud computing has evolved from a risky and confusing concept to a strategy that organizations large and small are beginning to adopt as part of their overall computing strategy. A few years ago when Hurwitz & Associates wrote Cloud Computing For Dummies, there was plenty of skepticism. Would businesses really be willing to adopt cloud computing? What exactly is cloud computing, and how does it help businesses be more effective?

The market has come a long way in a short amount of time. Today more companies — large and small — are doing everything from prototyping a new application with public clouds to implementing a complex private cloud as a utility to support customers and partners. Indeed, we have moved out of the first phase of this new market. We are now at the stage when customers are starting to ask not whether they should think about cloud computing but what types of cloud computing are best able to meet their business problems. Companies are realizing that they need many different types of cloud services in order to meet a variety of customer needs. Therefore, the idea of combining all forms of cloud models in conjunction with data center services as an amalgam or hybrid is the direction computing is headed. An organization deploys a hybrid cloud when it utilizes public and private clouds together with its data center(s) and there are touch points between at least one or more of the deployment models. For example, it shares data between a public and private cloud.

In this chapter, we provide an overview of the hybrid cloud computing environment, including the basics you need to understand in order to move forward in the world of hybrid clouds. First, it’s important to understand that an ecosystem of participants define the market. This ecosystem consists of three categories of players: consumers of services, providers of services, and designers of services. In addition, a fourth type of player is a combination of the other three: systems integrators can be consumers of cloud services, they can become a service provider themselves, or they can design services. Here are the characteristics of each:

Consumers: There are different types of consumers. A cloud services consumer might be an individual, or a small business team. Departments in large companies can be cloud services consumers. The IT department can use cloud services either to supplement existing data center services, or to provide specific cloud-based applications such as customer relationship management (CRM) to the sales team. Likewise, even a company that provides cloud services to consumers may use third-party cloud services to supplement their capacity.

Service providers: Cloud service providers are companies that offer packaged services to consumers. Many different types of providers range from those who offer services to individuals and those that serve a broad set of constituents. Many service providers focus on certain markets or certain types of workloads so they can optimize their offerings inexpensively. Thousands of cloud service providers provide public cloud services. Other service providers offer private clouds to support specialized services. A service provider can also be the consumer of a service they acquire to support their customers. Some traditional businesses have taken on the role of becoming a service provider to their customers and partners. These companies are discovering that like professional service providers, they can create a private cloud and offer their own set of services to their customers, which is viewed as a new source of revenue.

Service designers: Companies that can create sophisticated services, tools, and applications to support a variety of cloud models have a huge opportunity. These designers typically build everything from a full Software as a Service (SaaS) platform to tools needed for developers or deployers of cloud services. For example, there is an emerging market for companies that design security and governance offerings to support a variety of cloud models.

Systems integrators as cloud service providers: Systems integrators are getting into the act. Systems integrators are helping customers integrate their data center with public cloud services and private cloud environments. These companies are helping to define best practices and implementation road maps. These integrators can provide private clouds that they host and manage for customers.