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The following content is from an older version of this website, and may not display correctly.Gartner has identified five attributes of cloud computing, aiming to help evaluate how much that a service actually "adheres to the cloud computing model."
A report, titled "Five Refining Attributes of Public and Private Cloud Computing," altered Gartner's previous definition of cloud computing by changing one of the descriptors from "massively scalable" to "scalable and elastic."
By making the change, Gartner acknowledged that scalability involves sizing up and down instead of up only, as the previous definition suggested. The company's new definition for cloud computing is "a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to external customers using Internet technologies."
The five key attributes are:
ÔÇó Service-based
ÔÇó Scalable and elastic
ÔÇó Shared
ÔÇó Metered by use
ÔÇó Uses Internet technologies
A cloud service's ability to deliver on all of the five attributes increases the value of that service to the client. The "service-based" qualification is applied when the client is abstracted from provider concerns by a "well-defined" service interface.
The technology is tailored to being able to serve the consumer's specific needs, instead of the technology dictating "the articulation of the service feature."
In a recent article on DatacenterDynamics about IBM's view of the cloud two different levels of cloud services were described: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (Paas).
IaaS "effectively makes the entire infrastructure one platform, even though it's made up of many different machines." PaaS, on the other hand, provides for scheduling any amount of computing resources to "any particular job, or a specific amount of time," it said.
Gartner notes that a cloud service's scalability and elasticity are related to its value because a cloud's key advantage is being able to scale up or down, according to demand. Further, capacity has to be scalable in both directions "at the speed of full automation."
By "shared" Gartner researchers mean that cloud services share pooled IT resources, maximizing efficiency. In a true "shared" environment, available resources serve multiple clients' needs, with infrastructure specifics usually Datacenter Dynamics to the clients. Another necessary attribute of a true cloud computing model are multiple payment models, determined or "metered" by each client's use.
Payment plans based on usage replace plans based on equipment cost.
The firm's final key attribute of a cloud service is that it must be delivered using Internet identifiers, formats and protocols. The report is part of Gartner's more comprehensive report on cloud computing, titled The What, Why, and When of Cloud Computing."
A report, titled "Five Refining Attributes of Public and Private Cloud Computing," altered Gartner's previous definition of cloud computing by changing one of the descriptors from "massively scalable" to "scalable and elastic."
By making the change, Gartner acknowledged that scalability involves sizing up and down instead of up only, as the previous definition suggested. The company's new definition for cloud computing is "a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to external customers using Internet technologies."
The five key attributes are:
ÔÇó Service-based
ÔÇó Scalable and elastic
ÔÇó Shared
ÔÇó Metered by use
ÔÇó Uses Internet technologies
A cloud service's ability to deliver on all of the five attributes increases the value of that service to the client. The "service-based" qualification is applied when the client is abstracted from provider concerns by a "well-defined" service interface.
The technology is tailored to being able to serve the consumer's specific needs, instead of the technology dictating "the articulation of the service feature."
In a recent article on DatacenterDynamics about IBM's view of the cloud two different levels of cloud services were described: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (Paas).
IaaS "effectively makes the entire infrastructure one platform, even though it's made up of many different machines." PaaS, on the other hand, provides for scheduling any amount of computing resources to "any particular job, or a specific amount of time," it said.
Gartner notes that a cloud service's scalability and elasticity are related to its value because a cloud's key advantage is being able to scale up or down, according to demand. Further, capacity has to be scalable in both directions "at the speed of full automation."
By "shared" Gartner researchers mean that cloud services share pooled IT resources, maximizing efficiency. In a true "shared" environment, available resources serve multiple clients' needs, with infrastructure specifics usually Datacenter Dynamics to the clients. Another necessary attribute of a true cloud computing model are multiple payment models, determined or "metered" by each client's use.
Payment plans based on usage replace plans based on equipment cost.
The firm's final key attribute of a cloud service is that it must be delivered using Internet identifiers, formats and protocols. The report is part of Gartner's more comprehensive report on cloud computing, titled The What, Why, and When of Cloud Computing."