MoneyWatch Tech

Fog Is Lifting On Cloud Computing

By Michael Hickins

Updated on: May 15, 2009 / 10:33 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

If you're tired of everyone and their mother claiming that theirs and theirs alone is the true incarnation of The Cloud, hope is at hand. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has produced a working draft that defines various aspects of cloud computing, which may finally put a lid on the dubious claims put out by many vendors.

Even last summer, Datamation's Mike Elgan complained of the various uses of the term cloud computing:

"Cloud computing" has been used to mean grid computing, utility computing, software as a service, Internet-based applications, autonomic computing, peer-to-peer computing and remote processing.

The problem with the promiscuity with which the term "cloud" is used is that it discredits the entire industry; if everyone is doing "cloud," then in a sense, no one is doing it. The advantages the cloud are supposed to deliver become dissipated in the mists of deception, deceit and, ultimately, disillusionment.

The NIST is attempting to take care of that -- and as our national standards body, it's only appropriate that they do so.

Reuven Cohen, founder of cloud technlogy vendor Enomaly, blogs on the importance to the industry of having such an important stakeholder define the terms:

With an IT budget of more then 70 billion dollars a year, the US government represents the largest IT consumer on the planet. With this kind of money at stake, the influence the US government imposes is enormous and directly influences how we as industry both define and use the cloud.

The authors of the draft do everyone a favor by breaking it down into five key characteristics, three delivery models, and four deployment models.

Here is a simplified version of the five characteristics laid out by the NIST:

On-demand self-service: individuals can set themselves up without needing anyone's help;
Ubiquitous network access: available through standard Internet-enabled devices;
Location independent resource pooling: processing and storage demands are balanced across a common infrastructure, with no particular resource assigned to any individual user;
Rapid elasticity: consumers can increase or decrease capacity at will;
Pay per use: consumers are charged fees based on their usage of a combination of computing power, bandwidth use and/or storage

The possible delivery models:

Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS): Customers rent software hosted by the vendor;
Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS): Customers rent infrastructure and programming tools hosted by the vendor to create their own applications;
Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Customers rent processing, storage, networking and other fundamental computing resources for all purposes.

The possible deployment models:

Private cloud: The cloud infrastructure is owned or leased by a single organization and is operated solely for that organization.
Community cloud: The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations).
Public cloud: The cloud infrastructure is owned by an organization selling cloud services to the general public or to a large industry group.
Hybrid cloud: The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (internal, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology).

[Image credit: Steve Staso, Sun]