Thomas J. BittmanIs it a private cloud service, or a public cloud service? It’s not quite so binary. I first explored this in my post Virtual Cloud Privacy is Gray a few months ago. There are two relative dimensions that determine how “private” or how “public” a cloud service really is:
Service Control/Ownership: There are two ends of a spectrum here – complete implementation ownership, and complete lack of ownership and control of implementation. But there will be many examples in between of partial control, shared ownership, etc.
Service Access: Also two ends to this spectrum – at one end, usage is extremely exclusive, while at the other end, anyone who chooses can access the service. Again, there will be many examples in between of limited access, industry-only access, controlled partner access, etc.
These two dimensions are coupled at the extremes, but there are many variations in between. Each has different security/privacy, cost, customization and elasticity attributes.
Many of the cloud services that emerge in the next few years will fall somewhere in the middle (consider the customers choosing Exchange Online Dedicated, or paying for Reserved Instances from Amazon). Understanding the trade-offs and options is critical. This is an important area of research for me right now (two research notes completed, three more in progress!).
Category: Cloud Tags: cloud computing, private cloud
8 responses so far ↓
1 Do Private Clouds Make Any Sense? | Coded Style April 11, 2009 at 6:03 pm
[...] Mind you Tom Bittman of Gartner talks of Exchange Online dedicated as a private cloud which makes more sense to me than [...]
2 Christian May 2, 2009 at 12:33 am
Good points. Even when Bechtel decided to go with a ‘private’ cloud, they are still thinking about a hybrid model down the road… see:
http://cloudstoragestrategy.com/2009/03/bechtel-harnesses-the-cloud-a-case-study-in-service-delivery.html
cheers!
3 Four Myths About Cloud Computing May 8, 2009 at 10:03 pm
[...] ← The Spectrum of Private to Public Cloud Services [...]
4 Private Cloud Does Not Mean Private Sector June 8, 2009 at 2:51 am
[...] private services to fully public services that blurs distinctions of ownership or control (see Tom Bittman’s earlier post or his recent note The Spectrum of Public-to-Private Cloud Computing – subscription [...]
5 Cloud Computing in Government: Private, Public, Both or None July 1, 2009 at 6:23 am
[...] I just published a Gartner research note with this title (subscription required), which took some time to get published. We did have quite some discussion within the analyst community to make sure that positions expressed in this note, while recognizing certain important peculiarities of government, would not contradict Gartner established positions on cloud computing, especially for what concerns the differences between private and public cloud computing. These are discussed in various Gartner research notes and summarized in a blog post by Tom Bittman about The Spectrum of Private to Public Cloud Services. [...]
6 Clarifying Private Cloud Computing May 18, 2010 at 5:55 pm
[...] they know it when they see it, but they can’t quite explain it in words. A year ago I described The Spectrum of Private to Public Cloud Services, but I didn’t put that in the form of a definition. Here’s a [...]
7 Subiendo en la nube (Cloud IVR) | The Contact Center.es October 18, 2010 at 1:06 am
[...] quedando solamente diseñadores de aplicaciones. Cuanto menos, se irá imponiendo una manera de private cloud , es decir, un trocito alquilado de nube hecho más o menos a tu medida (Merecería la pena un día [...]
8 Clarifying Private Cloud Computing | PRIVATECLOUDHOSTING.CO March 22, 2012 at 3:10 pm
[...] they know it when they see it, but they can’t quite explain it in words. A year ago I described The Spectrum of Private to Public Cloud Services, but I didn’t put that in the form of a definition. Here’s a [...]
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