Cloud Computing Gains Critical Mass Despite Uncertainty About Its Definition

F5 Networks recently surveyed 250 companies’ senior IT Personnel about Cloud Computing, and one thing remains consistent – IT managers cannot come together regarding the consensual definition of the term. In fact, the survey represented no less than six separate definitions of cloud computing, and participants could not designate which was “right.”

The two most popular definitions were:

* Cloud computing is on-demand access to virtualized IT resources that are housed outside of your own data center, shared by others, simple to use, paid for via subscription and accessed over the Web.

* Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud.”

Interestingly, despite this massive confusion as to an exact definition, cloud computing continues to gain ground amongst IT professionals and the general public. In fact, 99% of the respondents to F5?s survey are actively discussing or implementing a cloud solution within their organization. More than half (66%) have set aside sizable budgets to implement said solution.

Additionally, IT Managers have high expectations for what can be “offloaded” to cloud environments. This is, of course, interesting depending on your own vision of what cloud computing is. 75% of the survey respondents believe PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) is part of the cloud. 66% said Iaas (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) should be or already is included. Interestingly, the most popular buzzword of all finds relative obscurity in the survey. SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) registered with only 60% of the participants. Can’t win them all, SaaS.

The things that drive the need for a public cloud are quite different than requirements reported by private cloud users.

* Public Cloud – #1 efficiency, #2 reducing capital costs, #3 easing staffing issues

* Private Cloud – #1 reducing capital costs, #2 agility, #3 easing staffing issues

It’s interesting that there is so little consensus given IT managers and their propensity for wanting to find out how things work. The critical technology must be addressed and defined before 100% of IT managers get behind the idea. The main concerns they want addressed before adopting could computing solutions are Access Control, Network Security, and Server and Storage Virtualization. Once that is done, then cloud will be here to stay.

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