Cloud computing -- continued

I plugged into a cloud computing webinar recently. I thought the meeting was informative for the first 30 minutes, and then it turned into a sales pitch for a tool to help create a private cloud. The supplier was Appistry (http://www.appistry.com/products).

Here are my takeaways:

• Cloud computing is the next step along the path in creating common, shared data centers. The major steps in this evolution are: dedicated data centers, virtualization of data center components (virtualized servers and shared storage), and now cloud computing.
• Some government groups are starting to use the cloud concept, but are creating "private" clouds by using their own infrastructure on configuring it to be a cloud environment to gain capital and operational efficiencies.
• Appistry claimed remarkable capital improvement efficiencies through developing a private cloud with their applications (CloudIQ Manager, and CloudIQ Engine). They referenced a benchmark study that resulted in an 80% improvement in capital utilization. Frankly, I find that hard to believe on a sustained rate. They also claimed very good operational efficiencies, which seem logical since the infrastructure would be normalized to standard configurations, in theory requiring less staff.
  
  

My hope in attending the webinar was to get better insights into cloud applications for government applications without using owned infrastucture. This discussion didn't address this since Appistry is focused on selling tool to help create private networks. But, the benchmark data on capital and operational efficiency benchmarks (even with factoring in some realism in the claims) helps demonstrate the value of cloud computing in potentially lowering ongoing costs to manage IT systems. Once the security model is adequately addressed, this model will start to be the solution of choice for data centers and information systems.