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Cloud Ontology

January 28th, 2009 Posted in Cloud Computing

John Willis’ blog post and Reuven Cohen comments bring up the ongoing debate on cloud ontology. I posted some thoughts on who will win in the different cloud segments around the launch of Microsoft Azure and the new breed of cloud solutions that combine different elements of the stack to solve specific business problems. Skytap is a great example of a solution which doesn’t fit neatly into the existing IaaS, PaaS and SaaS taxonomy. It would be convenient to label Skytap Virtual Lab a Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering, but this doesn’t capture the rich virtual lab automation application and vertical specific features, such as training workflow for student/instructors. Other cloud management and automation solutions (e.g. Elastra, Rightscale, and potentially CloudSwitch?) also don’t fit well into this taxonomy.

The USCB framework is graphically appealing. By adding a cloud solutions vertical bar to the side, it would capture some of the emerging cloud-based solutions that don’t fit into the IaaS/PaaS/SaaS model. Over time, I expect to see this category grow and be further classified as new management, automation, interoperability and vertical solutions become available.

-Ian

  1. One Response to “Cloud Ontology”

  2. By Sam Johnston on Jan 29, 2009

    G’day Ian,

    It’s interesting that you should mentioned that there’s a bunch of offerings that can’t be classified as that was one of the metrics I used in defining the 6 layer stack that the Wikipedia article is based on. Everything fits nicely and the titles are as meaningful while succinct as possible (ala the OSI stack on which it was based).

    Here’s the thing though: it doesn’t *need* to be complicated. Indeed cloud computing (at least from a user’s point of view) is as simple as it possibly can be, and the cloud conceals most of that complexity. Therein lies the problem – the cloud looks completely different from the top than what it does from underneath (in the same way a car does) and we’re not going to have much success trying to reconcile the two views.

    Sam

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