cloud

Lately I’ve been reading all these blog and news articles that deal about the key message of VMworld: Cloud Computing. A lot of the journalists and blog writers didn’t pay attention during the Keynotes because they keep coming back to the fact that a lot of companies want to keep control of their data. Companies don’t want to have all their data floating around in a “cloud”.

So what’s Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is Internet based development and use of computer technology. The cloud is a metaphor for the Internet and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it conceals. It is a style of computing where IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service”, allowing users to access technology-enabled services from the Internet without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them. (source wikipedia)

So this is where people get confused, in the first sentence it says “Internet”. So this must mean that my data isn’t secure and out of my hands… And VMware thinks everyone will be doing this in the future?
A bit further down the same wikipedia page it states:

The majority of cloud computing infrastructure currently consists of reliable services delivered through next-generation data centers that are built on compute and storage virtualization technologies. The services are accessible anywhere in the world, with The Cloud appearing as a single point of access for all the computing needs of consumers. Commercial offerings need to meet the quality of service requirements of customers and typically offer service level agreements. Open standards and open source software are also critical to the growth of cloud computing.

So the services(and data) are accessible anywhere in the world, with a single point of access. It doesn’t state that your services are out in the open. There is a thing called “internal” cloud and you can find a great explanation on the internal cloud on VINF.NET. Keep in mind that they wrote this article before VMware announced the vCloud initiative.

Although the word cloud was used a lot of times during the keynote I don’t think that’s what the keynote was actually about. The keynote was about new VMware technology.

These new technologies seem to revolve around one thing, delivering your services with a certain SLA. And to be able to do this, one has to have a heavily optimized and automated environment, preferably virtualized. That is what the keynote was actually about in my opinion, the integration of all these new and existing products into the Virtual DataCenter OS to enable SLA-driven effective usage of resources for an optimal user experience.