There is a lot of talk in the Cloud world these days around the various types of Cloud. Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid, the list goes on & on, but when you really consider these terms they say more about the technical implementation than anything else. But do I care? Should I care? What I’m really concerned about is making sure that my application is available to the right set of users in the most performant way possible, and that both myself and my customers/users are deriving the maximum value possible.
So my proposition is that the Cloud should be Transparent, i.e. I shouldn’t need to care about a physical implementation, about whether or not it’s a public or private implementation, I simply want to be able to provide governance parameters around the use of my application and let the platform make the decisions about the optimum way to then serve up my app. For all intent & purpose, the Cloud to me should be invisible!
For example, imagine specifying metrics around the sensitivity of data within my app and the platform then determining that in this case the app should run in my Private Cloud. Likewise one of my metrics maybe low latency performance for users in a particular geographic region, again the platform should then determine to run my app in a datacenter closest to the eyeballs of my users, possibly Public or Private. Or, imagine a scenario where the platform is frequently checking the usage rates for various different Public Cloud vendors and seamlessly moving my application to the lowest rate provider, again based upon my specified criteria.
We may be a little ways away from being able to achieve this but I believe that the future of Cloud will be the “Transparent Cloud”, where I can focus on building the best business applications driving the best business value rather than having to worry about the whole public/private/hybrid Cloud debate, or being locked into a particular Cloud vendor that may at some future time not meet my requirements.