I am in the business of selling the "Cloud." It's funny, but to the uninitiated, "Private Cloud" does look just like the Server Room they had before the cloud.
The differences (albiet, you could do much of this and NOT call it Cloud Computing), is:
1. Self provisioning of instances of capabilities (e.g., Apps, Virtual Servers, etc.).
2. Potentially managed by another vendor, over the Internet (sort of like the old ASP model).
3. Potentially leasing the hardware, software, people to manage (depending on how you buy your Private Cloud).
4. Upgrades/Migration handled by someone else (again, depending on your Private Cloud contract)
This list is not all inclusive, but it starts to hint at some of the differences. However, some could make the argument that they had some/all of these capabilities before the "Cloud." In some ways, "The Cloud" is just a re-marketing of a variety of technologies/approaches from the past, including:
- Mainframes/Leasing Computers
- ASP (Application Service Providers)
- SaaS (Software as a Service, before it became a part of one of the Cloud strategy)
- Managed/Dynamic Data Centers
- Virtualization (Server and/or Application)
- etc.
Is technology indistinguishable from magic? In his latest cartoon, Geek & Poke’s Oliver Widder shows the reality behind private clouds:
