Cloud Computing - Classifying your Clouds

Classification is part of information science whether we use bibliographic or faceted notation. Since we are classifying Clouds, let us take literary meaning from a weather perspective to make this a little more fun!

Clouds form when water vapor condenses onto microscopic dust particles (or other tiny particles) floating in the air. Think of particles as your dispensable computing resources. Water vapor are your computing or transactional requirements. Cloud computing simply is dispensable resources brought together at a rapid pace to address your business requirement of large scale computing such as business intelligence, large volumes of transactions or to deliver rich content to your consumers.

Include dimensions of cost, security, governance and transparency in provisioning services (including service level agreements) and you draw a complete picture of your Cloud.

We have four major categories of clouds in the troposphere. Stratocumulus, Altostratus, Cirrus and Cumulonimbus. In English, they are the low clouds (under 6,000 ft), the middle clouds (6,000-20,000 ft), the high clouds (over 20,000 ft) and clouds with vertical development (ground up to 50,000 feet).

Drawing a parallel with the Cloud Computing vernacular:

1. Low Clouds are your Departmental Clouds

Computing resources used by a line of business. Marketing effectiveness, Ready to launch activities etc.

2. Middle Clouds are your Bridging Clouds

Mainframes acting as Cloud to integrate with CRM providers such as SalesForce.com. Traditional data integration meeting ontology driven Semantic Web etc.

3. High Clouds are your Community Clouds

Multiple business entities coming together to address common computing challenges. Homeland security, Cancer research, Value at Risk frameworks etc

4. Clouds with vertical development are the Ideal Clouds
Self-learning, intelligent Clouds that go through metamorphosis based on events, predictability and projections. I plan to write about them on this blog.

A combination of the above can be grouped into Public, Private or Hybrid clouds based on economy of scale, governance and quality of service.

Cloud Computing components include providers of "X" as a service (XaaS, X=software, platform, infrastructure, storage et al), managed service providers, chargeback utility computing and so on. These are members of the new Troposphere.

Any water cooler conversations around Cloud Computing, silver linings (pun intended) and myriad of possibilities can be classified as a fog. Be cautious jumping on a bandwagon a.k.a Hype Cycle (term coined by Gartner Group) without strategic planning. You may end up with Mammatus cloud...mostly associated with tornadoes.

How does Cloud Computing influence and impact the value of data, your strategic asset. I plan to write about it next.

Share with me your real world experiences of preparing and realizing benefits of provisioning in the Cloud. In the world of Cloud Computing are you a Rainmaker ?