Cutting through the hype over cloud-based services

The problem with rebranding old ideas with a "cloud" moniker, however, is that it makes it all too easy for companies to jump on the hype bandwagon without fully understanding the basic concept, says Michael Harries, director of technology strategy and communications for the CTO office (and Citrix Labs) at Citrix Systems.

"Cloud is a broad range of things but we're using the same term for all of them, so people are hearing the term 'cloud' from 40 different directions, and everyone you talk to has a different definition," says Harries. "You talk to financial people and they say 'I love the cloud', but you drill down and they mean everything on the web."

Also, the catch-all term "cloud-based services" can actually be broken down into a number of categories, according to Citrix: virtualization (virtual servers, storage, networks), resource management (multi-tenancy, usage monitoring, optimizing across the farm), application management (which components work, how they need to interact, availability and performance) and access & automation (role-based access control, self service and admin portal, policy based automation).

Web-based world

On the bright side, it's that legacy element to cloud-based services that's partly responsible for driving new interest now that certain types of services that have been around for years are now mature and field-proven, says Carrero.

"Technology wise, elements like multi-tenancy and web services have matured enough to run them effectively," he says.
There are newer factors in play as well, such as bandwidth levels, he adds. "Look at connectivity in the late 90s compared to today, and it's significantly different."

Another factor is that thanks to broadband access and Web 2.0 apps, consumers and business users alike use the web far differently than they did ten years ago. "Things like Facebook, uploading pictures, weren't there in late 90s. Now we're almost dependent on the web for these services."

Harries of Citrix agrees. "People are more willing now to use web-based services. Half the population now has at least a web-based email account. We have enterprise customers that are treating their whole Windows desktop as a killer cloud app that they want from a service provider."

Enterprises are also becoming more comfortable with the idea of outsourcing certain types of software functionality, from desktops to vertical apps like Salesforce.com, he adds, though they're still just getting their toes wet with services like virtual servers and IaaS.

"A lot of people are out there at the moment kicking the tires and using IaaS as a way of dealing with burst demand, but while IaaS is an important shift and available to IT, it's still relatively underbaked for now," Harries says.