Everyday brings a deluge of cloud-related press releases, articles, analyst opinion, and,   somewhere among the confusion, some honest-to-goodness useful information. While there is always some hyperbole with any new technology direction, there is more to the concept of cloud computing than vapor (pardon the inevitable pun).

Stripping away the hype, cloud computing represents the next step along the continuum in the evolution of utility computing, and it promises to have a substantial impact in the way that organizations provide IT services to consumers in the future. From GlassHouse’s perspective, cloud computing, at a minimum, represents another option in terms of providing a given level of service. In the Service Provider Model (SPM), service levels are defined based on business requirements and IT delivery capabilities. On the “demand” side, attributes such as availability, recoverability, and performance form the basis for the service definitions. From the “delivery” side, IT is responsible for determining the most efficient means of providing a given service level. A key attribute, for both demand and delivery is, of course, the per-unit cost for each level of service.

Cloud computing opens up additional delivery options for organizations in planning and providing IT services. The advantages promised by cloud computing – operationalization of infrastructure costs, dynamic resource allocation, improved flexibility – must be weighed against potential challenges – availability and control of data, performance impact on applications, potential for vendor lock-in – in developing a services strategy.

GlassHouse, as a vendor independent provider of IT services, has been assisting clients in determining the appropriate IT services strategy for their organization. Incorporating cloud computing into an IT strategy impacts a wide range of IT functions, and our expertise in the areas of data center consolidation, virtualization, security, and data management and protection can provide a unique perspective to determining the right approach to planning and implementing cloud services.

Over the coming months, we’ll have more to say on this topic, but for those seeking a decent primer on the subject sans the hype, a good place to start might be the UC Berkeley paper, “Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing” (http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-28.pdf). While it has sparked some debate, it frames the subject and its key components quite well.

- Jim Damoulakis, GlassHouse CTO