I sat in on a great webinar the other day titled “The Real Truth About Cloud, SaaS and Saving Money Now”. This was presented by Daryl Plummer of Gartner as part of their Webinar series.
There were a lot of very interesting topics covered. First and foremost, he provides a clear definition of cloud computing. Gartner’s definition is “a style of computing where scalable and elastic IT-related capabilities are provided ‘as a service’ to external customers using Internet Technologies”.
I like this definition for its flexibility as well as its rigidity. Breaking down the definition, there are several key words that I’ll point out. First, it is “scalable and elastic”. As is pointed out in the webinar, this is one of the key differentiators between the cloud and the data center. This has been the source of much confusion in the past.
Secondly, it is “provided ‘as a service’”. A cloud is not something that is tangible, nor is it something the purchaser has to worry about. From the customer’s point of view, it just exists. One thing mentioned in the webinar is that the term cloud should be used as a singular term. There is one cloud, there are just different ways to access the cloud (AWS, Azure, etc). These access methods are the services.
The webinar does break down other phrases in the definition, but I think these are the two key phrases.
The cloud is then distinguished from Software as a service (SaaS). SaaS applications can be located in the cloud. However, just because they are SaaS does not mean they are in the cloud. The distinctions are in the definition above. Whether in the cloud or not, SaaS does have many benefits and many concerns. The concerns are things that are becoming less and less significant over time.
One interesting point made in the webinar is a shift in the relationship from Vendor -> User to a Provider -> Consumer relationship. With the SaaS and Cloud models, no longer is technology being sold to users who take and manage that technology. Now, services are being sold to consumers who access and use the services. This is similar to utility services where we don’t worry about how they get to us, we just want to be able to use them and pay for only what we use.
There is a lot of other excellent information provided in the webinar. I suggest you take a look at it. A replay of the webinar is available at http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=202&mode=2&PageID=5553&ref=Webinar-Calendar&resId=1046014
Tags: cloud computing, SaaS