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Cloud Computing is a term which has been discussed often over the past year. However, there does seem to be some confusion as to what it actually means as many companies and industry experts alike look to define what it is. Further advancements are being made everyday and companies are beginning to understand that this new technology is not simply a concept, but is becoming a reality.

With so many definitions of what the Cloud is and what direction it will take to become as big as industry watchers predict, it can be difficult for customers to get a true and clear picture. The following 10 points are not intended to form a perfect or strict definition of the Cloud, but instead describe the various components that together begin to paint the whole picture of the Cloud and its potential.  I also cannot take credit for any one of these alone as they are puzzle pieces that have helped me form my perspective:  

1. Cloud is an architecture: It is not just a product to help companies store their data more efficiently, it is the ability to use capacity as needed and balance this between both an internal  (the Cloud within a company’s firewall) and external (the Cloud out with a company’s firewall) environment.

2. Cloud is a journey: This metaphor describes the evolutionary nature of the Cloud with the disconnecting of physical infrastructure from the application world.  It requires management at a service-level not the device level - thus requiring you to think about IT management in an altogether different way.

3. Cloud is virtualisation:  As companies keep virtualising, they are already on their road to the Cloud. This is not to say that virtualisation is the Cloud, but it is clearly the first leg of the journey. It also requires you to go beyond just the server to consider and include network and storage.  Network virtualisation allows multiple protocols to run over the same medium, with the rapid developments around Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) being a great proof point.

4. Cloud is federation:  By uniting the internal Cloud, or a virtualised data centre and the external Cloud, it is only then that users are able to understand the true elasticity of the Cloud and its potential. When this is balanced with proper security to maintain privacy and transparency then practical federation can happen.

5. Cloud is open:  Or at least it should be.  Between the manifestos and rampant debates, it is hard to argue with the concept of being able to evolve your existing applications without rewriting them to a proprietary architecture.  With openness comes choice and a true marketplace. We are only just seeing the industry come to realise this and it will be interesting to see if this concept is accepted and welcomed.

6. Cloud is an overflow mechanism:  The analogy of the Cloud as an attic has been brought up at several industry events. Here, industry experts have established that the Cloud is there when you need it and you can access it quickly, when your current capacity is maxed out.  In this case, the Cloud plays the role of a hypothetical attic or garden shed that can store everything that doesn’t fit in the garage.

7. Cloud is choice:  Virtualisation is all about efficiency of the infrastructure. So when you align automation, security, federation and business processes you will be able to expand and contract resources based on application loads, service levels, and cost.

8. Cloud is a catalyst: Virtualisation brings new levels of native automation, simplicity, and speed.  But it doesn’t stop here. Virtualisation and Cloud should be the catalyst to positively change the way you manage IT. Embrace new tools and processes that take advantage of this new layer. This will raise IT management to a new level - breaking away from an older and out of date generation of tools meant to manage a legacy generation of technology infrastructures.

9. Cloud is Opex, too:  It’s not all about the capital expenditure (Capex), as the Cloud required operational expenditure (Opex). The initial wave of excitement of the Cloud brought capital expenditure benefits through consolidation. We expect that the next phase will involve which will involve formalising more of the operational expenses in order to get the equivalent Opex benefit to match or exceed your Capex benefit.

10. Cloud is here: We are already beginning to see Cloud-based products announcements such as EMC Atmos, VMware VSphere, EMC V-Max, and EMC Ionix. Today IT managers are presented with a wide range of emerging virtualisation management tools designed for the virtualised data centre, along with multiple SaaS and technology advancements. What can certainly be established from this is that the Cloud is here.

What will be interesting to see is how customers will evolve internally as they begin to adopt Cloud computing. As we begin to see a fundamental shift in how companies adopt and use the Cloud, it will only be then that they are able to see the true benefits including higher efficiency and subsequently lower running costs. As we see more employees want to work more flexibly, the mobility of the Cloud will allow them to access it on the move from wherever they choose or need to work.