Blogs Hybrid clouds … like the auto industry (in a good way!)
It’s great to see all the attention on hybrid clouds over the past few weeks. I read with interest the blog post over at zdnet interviewing Rackspace’s Chief Strategy Officer who talked about Rackspace’s roadmap to deliver hybrid solutions in the coming months. This doesn’t happen often but I’m in complete agreement with his comments that hybrid clouds will be the way enterprises embrace cloud computing for the foreseeable future, at least until the applications that drive enterprises become cloud aware.
I had a similar conversation with analysts from Gartner and IDC following the launch of our hybrid cloud solution at the beginning of June. One thing the zdnet article didn’t cover that the analysts jumped on right away, is the savings customers can achieve by adopting a hybrid approach vs. pure cloud based on today’s public cloud providers.
A simple analogy we have been using is that of the auto industry.
Lets assume you are traveling to a new city for a day and need a car. Not a good move to purchase or lease a car since you are not making a long term commitment. The reverse is true, if you need a car for the long term, renting from Avis is not a cost-effective way to gain the use of a car.
We like to consider;
- Colocation = purchase a car, maintain a car yourself
- Managed services = lease a car, lease holder maintains the car
- Cloud computing = rent a car by the hour/day
The analogy fits very well, especially when you consider the managed scenario’s servers typically depreciate over 36 months which just so happens to be the same as most lease lengths.
So here’s the punchline - as an IT consumer, you need access to all three options depending on the problem you are trying to solve and most often, all three inside the same solution. Carpathia AlwaysOn/InstantOn™ has this today and in fact, we have been busy sharing customer success stories on http://www.whatisinstanton.com /. No need to wait for Rackspace to execute on its roadmap, come talk to us http://www.carpathiahosting.com/live-chat .
Tags: Hybrid Cloud
August 19th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
I love this analogy. It takes a pretty opaque topic and really brings it down to a level that more people can relate to. I also like how it is broken down in segments along a continuum based on need. Too often I think technology is shoved forward as the newest and best without looking at how it actually will be used. Great stuff.
August 20th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Interesting analogy Jon. You could also say that colocation is like owning a condo, managed services like renting an apartment, and cloud computing like a hotel room. Hopefully that hotel room isn’t like those rooms that are rented by-the-hour.