Which Cloud Is Right For You?

As you read the title of this blog, you are probably thinking "What are you about to sell me?". Being the architect and consultant at heart that I am, I couldn't bring myself to do that just yet. No instead I want you to think about the various kinds of cloud computing.

Conventional definitions are mostly restricted to public versus private clouds. However, the Cloud Cube white paper from the Jericho Forum and Chris Hoff's elaboration on the cloud cube expanded my concept to include a much broader spectrum of possibilities.

Not only can clouds categorized in terms of public and private but they can also be characterized in many other terms as well. Consider the following possibilities:

• Internal/External (e.g. in your company's datacenter),
  
• Open/Proprietary (e.g. Interoperable, Portable and Interchangeable),
  
• Perimeterised/De-perimeterised (e.g. Operating within the traditional IT perimeter),
  
• Insourced/Outsourced,
• Offshore/Onshore (e.g. would offshoring data create a security or privacy risk?),
  
• Reglatory X compliant/Non-compliant (e.g. HIPPA, FISMA, SOX, ... etc.)
  
• Single tenancy/Multi-tenancy (dedicated/shared server, network storage,... etc.),
  
• Isolated data/co-mingled data (e.g. disk storage, database, backups, directory),
  
• Dedicated security/Socialist security,
  
• and On-premise/Off-premise

Once you start to consider these many facets of Cloud Computing, it becomes easier to understand why it can be so complicated. The conclusion that I came to from this broadened perspective is that it is vital to understand as many aspects of the requirements for your service before blindly jumping into a specific Cloud Computing solution. You may find that there were more requirements than you thought that were inherently addressed by hosting your service within your private datacenter. However, you may find that your service may be very flexible and have a wide variety of cloud options. The main point is to understand your requirements so that you can make the most informed decision possible.

Thanks to the folks at the Jericho Forum and Chris Hoff for broadening my perspective.
Thanks also to Joel Weise for the referral to Chris Hoff's blog.

Brad