The Ideal Cloud

Couple of weeks ago I wrote about Cloud Classification with a note to write about the Ideal Cloud.

Ideal for whom? why? when? and I cycle through the W's of Zachman framework. There are more than ten definitions of Cloud Computing out there. Draw a scatter plot and you see the confidence and correlation of elements distributed amongst the Grid, SaaS, distributed application design, utility computing and virtualization models.

Below are my thoughts on characteristics of an Ideal Cloud. Comments are always welcome.

1) Business economics - Simple. No descriptions necessary. Finito.

2) Empowering the User - Giving the end user (line of business or individual) the power of independence through minimum or no administrative work, easy to use user interfaces and improved accessibility. Focus is improving business agility and taking away the "distractions" of managing computing resources (servers, applications)

3) Dynamic Computing - Infrastructure is ready and available when required based solely on utilization, independent of the provider (in-house or a service provider). Call it elasticity, flexibility, ease of provisioning/de-provisioning, on-demand et. al.

4) Self Managing, Self Healing - Precise responsiveness to usage characteristics, seasonal peaks, complex access patterns, disruptions, service level agreements and event based reservations.

5) Pay-at-the-pump - Extend the concept of paying for gas, utilities and such. Pay for what you use. Get discounts based on usage, scale, loyalty and life time value.

6) Data ownership - Unambiguous ownership and stewardship of acquiring, integrating, packaging (partitioning, synchronization, security) and distribution of data. Supplement this with data asset integrity framework to address governance, compliance and regulatory requirements. It is all about the data in my blogs, rest is just details :)

Cloud Computing must help you achieve on all three fronts: reduce costs, extend capital investments, improve business agility.

Aiming for anything less or have a different agenda? This Cloud will usher in storms. Invest in an umbrella.