There was an article today from ZDNet that I thought would be interesting, especially for those with a interest in cloud computing.  Now I said I would talk about the negative side to cloud computing but I thought I keep the benefits and in this case, the characteristics and of course that was due partly from this article.

The first characteristic that Mr. Surgient talks about is Dynamic Computing Infrastructure, in which talks about how that should happen, in order for cloud computing to be workable.  He mentions that the infrastructure has to be “a standardized, scalable, and secure physical infrastructure” and that it should contain some “levels of redundancy to ensure high levels of availability.”  By having your infrastructure as such, it helps that you don’t have to waste all thats within the network and just use what you need.  On top of that,  Mr. Surgient mentions that this environment has to be virtualized and that is the key to the success of cloud computing.  If your remember my last post which I had mention that a school is doing the same thing with its computer environment, and that is where the scalability and redundancy would come into play.

The next characteristic that he talks about is IT service-centric, meaning that 99% of the time computers are being used for some sort of service.  Now he talks about a contrasting styles between system or server centric models compared to the cloud and so I am only assuming that he is referring to how software and business models get deployed in the computer world.  However,  I think his primary point makes the most sense.  “In most cases, users of the cloud generally want to run some business service or application for a specific, timely purpose; they don’t want to get bogged down in the system and network administration of the environment.”  In a way, that means that with a cloud network fully intact and workable it would seem that those hiccups or slow networks might become a thing of the past.

The next characteristic that Mr. Surgient talks about is, in my opinion, the most important one and that being the Self-service based usage model.  What this model is about is simple and that is hte user experience and the users being able ot move around within the cloud at their own pace and not have to worry about the cloud provider if one is being used.  Of course, we have to remember that the documentation and training is the most important in this aspect and I think with the direction the cloud is going to.  It would seem important that books and training materials start being produce in oder to get the basic downs and lay down a solid foundation so developers new and old can get a good start in the cloud.

This next characteristic I think will either make or break the cloud industry, and that is Minimally or self-managed platform, meaning that what would take weeks and months to update and then go through the testing wouldn’t cut down dramatically.  Or another way you can look at this, is that the updates would be seemless and won’t require any downtime or cause problems for the applications or data being stored from getting coruppted or glitched to be unrecoverable.

Although not having to worry about micro-managing your cloud is very important, the biggest topic when it comes to the cloud is cost.  No matter what article you read or what website you visit, the cost of running a cloud will always be talked about.  In my paper that I will be presenting in the next few weeks will mention that a company is spending only hundreds of dollars in what would cost thousands of dollars to run and store video on demand service.

Now if you look at Youtube, odds are they slowly but surely moving the videos to cloud servers to help cut down the costs on bandwidth usages.  Odds are they are in the hundreds of terabytes a month in terms of people watching videos.  That is why the final charactertistic in this article, Consumption-based billing, will sure spike people’s interests, since you only spend what you use and not spend what you get.

Overall, these five characteristics are part of the equation for you need to run a successful cloud, however, making the switch is going to take time and patiences, especially if your working under legacy systems or your a well establish company.  But if your a up and coming start up, then it would be a good idea to see if you could use a cloud to help run your business more smoothly.