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Cloud computing is probably one of the most overused and misused terms of today. I believe the sentiments shared by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison on the cloud are somewhat accurate.
Now my positive experience with this ambiguous topic was moving an application that was constrained running on a limited number of physical servers sitting in racks in a data center to a virtual cluster of servers provided by a “Cloud” provider. Taking what Larry says the “Cloud” provider is running computers in a data center that have an operating system, memory, storage, and data bases. But to me as a consumer of the “Cloud” services all of that is hidden from me and my administrators and we just see a slick little interface that let us build, load, and copy servers in a matter of minutes. Beyond the convenience factor is the value of the utility based cost structure offered by my “Cloud” computers. Meaning you only pay for computer processing resources when you use them.
Now recognizing this value is not new to me as I have been tracking the hype and development around cloud computing for years. What hit me this weekend is the value of not only having those physical computers hidden from me but also all of the infrastructure that is included with the service. For example I spent a percentage of my weekend researching Firewall, Intrusion Protection, and other security requirements that are needed within an infrastructure for a client. In the “Cloud” that burden is all passed to the “Cloud” service provider. Granted it is not a silver bullet moving to the “Cloud” to solve all of your security concerns but the fundamental infrastructure of a viable “Cloud” providers are pretty rock solid far exceeding the capabilities of the average small to medium business to mitigate the same threats.