A Fourth Type of Cloud Computing?
You’ve heard of software-as- a- service (SaaS), platform-as- a- service (Paas) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), but what’s the fourth type of cloud computing. I hear that several vendors are positioning services as such to gain marketing traction. But just what is it?
Apparently, they are advisory or development consulting services. But Dan Kuznetsky of ZDNet doesn’t consider these true cloud computing formats because to be a true cloud, a few things need to be present. As a primer, I thought I’d share:
A – APIs must be available so that companies or organizations can develop their own management environments;
B – You need a Web-based management environment to enable organizations to operate and administer all functions of a subscriber’s cloud environment;
C – Subscribers should have access to very granular accounting and costing information that allow them a detailed level of control and the creation of chargeback mechanisms.
D – The cloud environment must be scalable and elastic – allowing subscribers to control their use of cloud resources.
E – There should be a set of self-service tools available that can be very quickly used.
F – The cloud should exist virtually, and the hardware supplier should be independent.
Dan thinks a fourth type of legitimate cloud computing could exist, for example, a service that would front-end multiple kinds of offerings and allow automatic deployment across numerous cloud computing supplier environments. “This approach would support workload management, workload service level management, workload failover and the like.”
Interesting! What do you think could be a fourth type of cloud computing?