Cloud from both sides

One of the most interesting aspects of Cloud Computing I have noticed over the past couple of years is the dichotomy that exists between Cloud USERS and Cloud PROVIDERS.

From the user perspective Cloud Computing is a means of abstracting all (or most of) the complexities inherent in the delivery of IT. From the provider’s perspective it is entirely the opposite.

Where the end user is no longer concerned with Real Estate, Power and Cooling, Depreciation of Capital Equipment, High Availability, OS patching and maintenance etc., the provider needs to consider these aspects in spades.

As CC is typically defined as “Utility” computing it is frequently compared to other utilities such as water, sewage and electricity. Few organizations of medium or even large size provide their own water, sewage treatment or generate their own power. Pay-per-Use is a well-understood and accepted model. You can control certain aspects of your expenses (energy-efficient equipment, and flushless urinals for example) but for the most part, you just pay what the utility asks, and in many cases, there is no choice of provider, particularly when it is a municipality.

Cloud Providers, on the other hand, rarely have the monopolistic advantage enjoyed by their peers in other utilities. The goal is to deliver services efficiently, and at a price competitive not only to other providers, but to the time-tested method of doing IT “in-house.” Clearly, if there is no economic incentive to run one’s IT “in the Cloud” its adoption will stagnate.

One might point to economies of scale as a distinct advantage to providers. As running IT is a Core Competency, one might expect that the folks running the infrastructure are the best of the best, and that sharing not only talent, but Real Estate and other utilities (for which a large provider can likely bid out) will tip the scales in favor of the specialists.

In view of this, consider the weight of responsibility on the shoulders of the providers who potentially must support the needs of a disparate universe of customers. Aside from the expertise to run a potentially large number of operating systems and platforms, adhering to SLAs (a whole ‘nother topic) ensures that the complexity that is shielded from the users becomes an enormous issue for those delivering XaaS.

I think the offers we are seeing in the market currently reflect this necessity to simplify as much as possible. SaaS providers have it the easiest. IaaS vendors also hedge their bets by providing pretty “raw” offerings. Pick your number of cores, amount of memory, storage volume, and maybe number of NICS (all of this physical or virtual) and you are good to go.

The Platform providers seem to be the ones with the hard choices to make. Java or .NET Framework? Both ? AJAX, MySQL, Flash Collaboration Services, and a plethora of others require significant investments in human expertise to support. Providers tend toward specializing out of necessity.

This divide will not be going away, so it is important in any discussion of Cloud Computing to discern upfront which perspective any participant is representing.