Monday, August 25, 2008

Bringing Cloud Computing "Inside"

Just a quick note & pointer to a great article just published by Bill Coleman, Cassatt's CEO. (You'll recognize his name as the "B" from BEA Systems).

The article is in On Demand Enterprise, and is titled "Bring Cloud Computing Inside: Internal Clouds Give You Efficiency and Experience While Avoiding the Stormier Problems". An excerpt:
What if you could construct your own internal cloud within your own four walls, to maximize the benefits of the concept without being held up by its limitations? And what if you didn't have to change your current applications or data while still being able to leverage external cloud resources where they best fit your needs? For many of us, this is, in fact, the ideal application of cloud computing. The internal cloud negates the limitations of current cloud providers, and enhances the cost and availability benefits. Here's your chance to be a little selfish, take advantage of cloud-style architecture for yourself. Set up a cloud within your own shop and you are experiencing, as they say, the best of the both worlds -- and maybe getting a jump on the future, to boot.
Yes, the term "internal cloud" might offend some IT folks' sense of accuracy. But once you get past the terminology, the concept of the architecture's simplicity, the incredible economies-of-scale, and the preservation of invested capital are pretty compelling.

1 comment:

James Urquhart said...

An excellent argument and well written article. It is good to see Cassatt go head on into the cloud debate. Hopefully now more bloggers will recognize the strong platform that Cassatt has to offer.

I would have liked to see Bill discuss how "inside your four walls" approaches could drive changes in the public cloud. Does Cassatt have technology to offer the standardization and/or open source discussions? Are they prepared to be major players in the opening of cloud platforms to cross vendor portability, even if only for private/public cloud hybrids?

For instance, Cassatt has had cross-virtualization platform portability for several years now, though not in the form most people expect. Would Cassatt consider open sourcing their imaging and provisioning technologies?

Nonetheless, I am excited about Cassatt taking this market head on, and look forward to more compelling discussions like this. Congratulations to Bill and the Cassatt team.