What is cloud computing

If you are interested you can see the presentation.

We have talked quite a bit about cloud computing on this blog, but I don’t think we have ever pinned down what this computing in the cloud business actually means.

Having a clear definition of what the term means is important for making decisions. There is a video that was suggested to me, which is pretty good as an introduction, but we need something more precise from a technical point of view.

NIST has a fairly useful guide with precise definitions on the subject, which I am going to share with you.

The first thing to understand is that cloud computing is an evolving paradigm. The definitions will change over time. The cloud computing industry represents a vast group of companies, models, vendors and market niches. The NIST definition tries to cover all of these.

Cloud computing

According to NIST, cloud computing is “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.

Essential characteristics

On-demand self-service

Broad network access

Resource pooling

Rapid elasticity

Measured service

Service models

There are three service models:

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Deployment models

Private cloud

Community cloud

Public cloud

Hybrid cloud

Source: http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/

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