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Cloud computing
A collection of
working papers

Thomas B Winans
John Seely Brown

Cloud Computing frequently is taken to be a term that simply renames
common technologies and techniques that we have come to know in IT.
It may be interpreted to mean data center hosting and then subsequently
dismissed without catching the improvements to hosting called utility
computing that permit nearrealtime, policy-based control of computing
resources. Or it may be interpreted to mean only data center hosting
rather than understood to be the significant shift in Internet application
architecture that it is.
Perhaps it is the name. Certainly it is more nebulous than mnemonic, if
you’ll pardon the poor pun. We happen to think so too. We’d rather use
the term service grid, frankly, butthat name also has its problems. The
fact is that cloud and service grid computing are paradigmatically different
from their common interpretations, and their use can shed light on how
internet architectures are constructed and managed.
Cloud computing represents a different way to architect and remotely
manage computing resources. One has only to establish an account
with Microsoft or Amazonor Google to begin building and deploying
application systems into a cloud. These systems can be, but certainly
are not restricted to being, simplistic. They can be web applications that
require only http services. They might require a relational database. They
might require web service infrastructure and message queues. There might
be need to interoperate with CRM or e-commerce applicationservices,
necessitating construction of a custom technology stack to deploy into
the cloud if these services are not already provided there. They might
require the use of new types of persistent storage that might never have
to be replicated because the new storage technologies build in required
reliability. They might require the remote hosting and use of custom or
3rd party softwaresystems. And they might require the capability to
programmatically increase or decrease computing resources as a function
of business intelligence about resource demand using virtualization. While
not all of these capabilities exist in today’s clouds, nor are all that do exist
fully automated, a good portion of them can be provisioned.

Are the services that are provided by the cloud robust in theenterprise sense?
Absolutely … especially if you mean the enterprise as we know it today.
While there are important security, privacy and regulatory issues that
enterprises need to sort through before full migration to the cloud, and
cloud vendors need to strengthen cloud capabilities in these areas before
enterprise applications can be effectively hosted in the cloud, there are
benefitsthat cloud technologies do offer today that can be leveraged in
the deployment of many enterprise applications. Further, cloud vendors
are likely to offer virtual private cloud functionality that quite possibly will
(at least temporarily) compensate for current deficiencies as cloud vendors
work to address them in a more strategic and long-term way.
Migration to the cloud will not be immediatebecause of issues noted
above, and because enterprises need to approach migration in a
staged fashion, just as they would undertake any significant technology
transition. The first stage of migration is to determine what enterprise
infrastructure and applications can be reliably rearchitected using cloud
computing technologies today to gain experience with a cloud-oriented
way of organizing andaccessing digital technology. This stage may
include development of a migration path that progressively transitions
more of the enterprise infrastructure and applications to cloud providers
as they evolve more robust services that can support a broader range of
enterprise IT activities. The key goal of this stage is to define the roadmap
to replicate what is available on premise today using...