DKL Consulting and The Cloud
What is the Cloud: Cloud computing describes computation, software, data access, and storage Services. The Cloud does not require end-user knowledge of the physical location and configuration of the system that delivers the Services. Parallels to this concept can be drawn with the electricity grid where end-users consume power resources without any necessary understanding of the component devices in the grid required to provide the service.
The adoption rate of cloud-based or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications has been dramatic. Just a few years ago, small groups in your company probably started experimenting with applications like Salesforce.com, WebEx, or NetSuite. Those trials have now transitioned into enterprise-wide deployments that store critical information and power core business processes. Today this SaaS is being enacted in the majority of small and midsize businesses (SMB). In fact, a recent market survey by Goldman Sachs stated that 58 percent of SMBs always consider a SaaS option and 39 percent prefer a SaaS option, if available. In the enterprise as well, Gartner predicts that worldwide software as a service revenue for 2010 will surpass $8.5 billion, up 14.1 percent from 2009 and that SaaS revenue share of the overall enterprise software market will grow from just over 10 percent in 2009, to more than 16 percent in 2014. The move to the cloud is definitely on.
Types of Clouds
Public
Public cloud or external
cloud describes cloud computing in the traditional
mainstream sense, whereby resources are dynamically
provisioned on a fine-grained, self-service basis over
the Internet, via web applications/web Services / The Cloud, from an
off-site third-party provider who bills on a
fine-grained utility computing basis.
The Public clouds can be a great place for the SMBs to
start out if they need expensive hardware and software
to startup their new business.
Private
Some vendors have used the term to describe offering that emulate cloud computing on private networks. These (typically virtualization automation) products offer the ability to host applications or virtual machines in a company's own set of hosts. These provide the benefits of utility computing -shared hardware costs, the ability to recover from failure, and the ability to scale up or down depending upon demand.
Hybrid (Local)
There is some confusion over the term "hybrid" when applied to the cloud - a standard definition of the term "Hybrid Cloud" has not yet emerged. The term "hybrid cloud" has been used to mean either two separate clouds joined together (public, private, internal or external), or a combination of virtualized cloud server instances used together with real physical hardware. The most correct definition of the term "Local cloud" is probably the use of physical hardware and virtualized cloud server instances together to provide a single common service.
Local
The Local cloud is where you have your own servers but
use the cloud for say storage or SaaS. This is the best
place to start for most larger companies.