P.A.A.S Platform as a service
“The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications, created using programming languages and tools supported by the provider,” according to NIST. This includes environments such as Microsoft’s Azure, or Salesforce’s Force.com.
Businesses may well be using some, or all, of these services already. Hosted Microsoft Exchange email or hosted SharePoint services, Google’s Docs product and software as a service applications - of which Salesforce.com is perhaps the best known - show the range of services on offer through the cloud.
Increasingly, cloud computing is being used as a byword for bought-in IT services that stop short of full outsourcing deals, involving long-term contracts and the transfer of equipment or staff.
Cloud is coming; maybe not in the way that the analysts think it is – but there is very little chance that anyone in the IT sector will be unaffected by either Cloud concepts, or by the mis-selling of some other kind of product under a Cloud banner.
We’re all professionals, whether permanent or contract. This means that we believe our role in a business has an agreed value, to the business, and to us: The way the Cloud bandwagon is rolling at the moment is – let’s not beat about the bush – a direct threat to the careers of a very large swathe of the IT business.
The irony is, the people who fit this description most closely are currently snorting and chuckling derisively at my words. That’s what they do: misplaced aloof derision is the stereotype of the IT worker. Cambridge professors ruefully admit how difficult it makes their industry outreach projects; sitcom writers make their living off it and there are whole sites – whole galaxies of sites – out there on the net that take that tone and run with it.
Let’s not kid ourselves; if we are sat down beside a salesman in a white shirt with a bolt through the neck, and we have to make ourselves look more appealing, it is a hell of a job to win the day without sounding whiney, paranoid, and defensive. IT departments that play the yearly budget bloat game, mixed with an unhealthy dose of that derision thing, are sitting ducks when it comes to salesmen armed with the “C” word and access to board members who are just that bit extra tired, this week, of being talked down to.
In practice, cloud computing can be defined as technology – including software and hardware – that is owned by others, run remotely from the end-user business, and paid for through a flexible contract.
That pricing model could either be a subscription, per user, per month, or a form of pricing based on IT capacity or even transactions. Consumer services such as Mozy, an online backup service, have already set an example for this, by charging end users per gigabyte of storage they rent.
The cloud in practice
Inevitably, definitions will star to blur, as businesses, and vendors, put the emerging infrastructure to new uses. One business might well use a cloud service to provide a service, in turn, to others; there are already examples of companies building suites of hosted applications, using cloud technologies, for vertical markets such as law firms or estate agency.
At the other end of the spectrum, large enterprises and public sector bodies are going about creating their own, private versions of cloud computing. These use many of the same technology building blocks as public clouds, and even some of the same economic models, through internal charge-back mechanisms.
By putting cloud computing infrastructure behind the firewall and within the control of the IT department, some of the difficulties around security, privacy and data ownership are overcome.
