Thursday 29 July 2010
The draft NIST definition, perhaps the best we have at this point, states that “Cloud computing is a pay-per-use model for enabling available, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. One of the key value propositions for cloud computing is the transfer of expense from the capital (CAPEX) to the operational (OPEX) column. Private clouds can still deliver some of the other benefits of cloud computing, especially for the largest organizations. Private and hybrid clouds can also serve as a gateway, allowing enterprise IT to become familiar and comfortable with cloud computing paradigms in a controlled environment.
This might seem foolish to the average person, or even the travel departments of medium-sized businesses, but the substantial expense might be offset by the convenience or increased productivity of private aviation. Cloud computing is similar: The average individual or organization will probably derive maximum benefit from sharing a public cloud infrastructure, but this should not preclude certain special cases where a private cloud will be called for.
Marketing collateral and even in Keynote addresses. Its main purpose is to throw off the status quo and create a mind shift for what is perceived to be right and true. According to Wikipedia, “FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence public perception by disseminating negative information designed to undermine the credibility of their beliefs. So what is the FUD about Cloud Computing and Hosting Providers using SaaS as a delivery mechanism for applications? Well first we have to look at the negative press of late regarding the cost of deployment. From a recent NY Times article, a quote regarding a McKinsey & Co report states “Its study uses Amazon.com’s Web service offering as the price of outsourced cloud computing, since its service is the best-known and it publishes its costs.
It sure seems like we spend an inordinate amount of time in the IT world polarizing one system against another. The truth is Cloud Computing is an evolution of what has been going in the virtualization world for years. If you believe the Forrester statistics, about half of the server/computing world are virtualized today. While that number is staggering it also leaves a huge opportunity for companies to deliver applications via a virtualized approach. The Forrester data also shows “Firms surveyed showed growing interest in pay-per-use-hosting of virtual servers, one of many types of cloud service offerings in the market.
The business will offer customers access to software, computing power and storage as a pay-per -use, on-demand, online service. The “platform as a service” subscription includes a server-based pricing package and a per-CPU package. Prices start at S$434 for a single core server per month, to packages that include eight processor cores, 16 gigabytes of memory and 80 gigabytes of storage, for S$3,520 per month. Additional memory costs S$25 a month while storage is priced at S$6 a month for 10 Gbytes.
A second subscription option called “high performance computing” is priced at S$0.51 per hour per CPU, and S$0.60 per gigabyte of storage per month. Both packages require subsequent fees for memory and storage, as well as a one-time set up charge of S$500. Alatum also will provide software as a service in the accounting and finance areas. Partners include Avartis Planning; security solution provider BoxSentry; financial BPO specialist Melioris; enterprise application developers AlpSoft; enterprise software vendor Cnetric; SaaS vendor Aksaas; ADX (Asia Debts Exchange), Web security provider Resolvo, data management firm Atempo; customer feedback outsourcer Jusfeedback and business process consultant Acceval. Technology partners for Alatum include Citrix, Oracle, RedHat, Microsoft and Platform Computing.
Alatum provides “a network of on-demand applications, services and storage and computational components over the Internet. The service is powered by 24,000 processors and employs 16 terabytes of storage space, offering minimal set up and maintenance of hardware and software applications, with no need to own servers and expansive data centre infrastructure. The company is founded on a project awarded to SingTel by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore back in June 2008. The company markets itself as “a collaboration between SingTel and leading technology providers to provide commercial grid computing services to business enterprises and public sector agencies,” adding ‘the team will deliver software, computing power and storage as a pay-per-use, on-demand, on-line services to customers.” So far, the company has introduced two levels of services, a platform-as-a-service offering and a software-as-a-service product. For the PaaS service, subscription options include a server-based pricing package still in the testing phase, and a per-CPU package. Prices start at S$434 for a single core server per month, to packages that include 8 processor cores, 16GB of memory and 80GB of storage, for S$3,520 per month.
Additional memory costs S$25/month while storage is priced at S$6 a month for 10GB. A second subscription option called, HPC (high-performance computing) is priced at S$0.51 per hour per CPU, and S$0.60 per 1GB of storage per month. Both packages require subsequent fees for memory - as in RAM, and storage, as well as a one-time set up charge of S$500.There is little pricing or product-related information on the SaaS component of the offering, except the applications will range across accounting and finance, with the ability scale quickly to meet user demands. Technology partners for Alatum include: Citrix, Oracle, RedHat, Microsoft and Platform Computing, who will provide its virtual management and high performance software to the company. Working with many of world’s premier IT providers such as Platform Computing, we have created a computing platform for commercial and public sector organizations to cost effectively access the best and most advanced technologies, applications and services.
