The National Institute for Standards in Technology defines cloud computing as having five charcteristics reports Brandon Butler for Network World. Those five characteristics include: on demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity or expansion and measured service.
But, as cloud computing grows at a rapid pace this definition can get “cloudy” to potential IT buyers, so Gartner has also added some common private cloud misconceptions to help with clarity. Gartner’s common misconceptions include:
- Cloud is not just virtualization. Virtualization technology does allow organizations to pool and allocate resources but it lacks the qualities around self-service and rapid elasticity.
- Cloud is not just a money saver. Gartner recommends that the driving benefit of adopting the cloud should be around increased agility and dynamic scalability which can improve speed to market.
- Private cloud is not always on-premise. Private cloud computing is defined by privacy not location, ownership or management responsibility.
- Private cloud isn’t just in the infrastructure layer. Although IaaS is the fastest growing it is not the only private cloud deployment.
- It may not always be private. Gartner predicts that as businesses continue to evolve their use of cloud services the private cloud will evolve into a hybrid cloud where some public cloud resources are leveraged.
