Cloud computing

Cloud computing is an increasingly broad topic that encompasses everything from Google Apps to data center services to virtualization to software-, infrastructure- and platform-as-a service. Technology executives are increasingly interested in cloud computing as a way to save money. Nevertheless, cloud adoption remains in the single digits amid security concerns. Rest assured that cloud computing is a game changer. Key players include: IBM, HP, Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Salesforce.com, NetSuite, VMware as well as dozens of others.




Cloud computing holds real promise for enterprises, SMBs, as well as the ISVs and individual developers serving them. To help organizations realize the promise and avoid the perils of cloud computing, rPath’s Cloud Computing Adoption Model provides a pragmatic, actionable, step-by-step framework for achieving measurable benefits now, while laying the foundation for the strategic benefits of a cloud infrastructure over time. The five levels of cloud computing adoption are shown and explained below.

Level 1: Virtualization. The first level of cloud adoption employs hypervisor-based infrastructure and application virtualization technologies for seamless portability of applications and shared server infrastructure.

Level 2: Cloud Experimentation. Virtualization is taken to a cloud model, either internally or externally, based on controlled and bounded deployments utilizing the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for compute capacity and as the reference architecture.

Level 3: Cloud Foundations. Governance, controls, procedures, policies, and best practices begin to form around the development and deployment of cloud applications. Initially, level 3 efforts will focus on internal, non-mission critical applications.

Level 4: Cloud Advancement. Governance foundations allow organizations to scale up the volume of cloud applications through broad-based deployments in the cloud.

Level 5: Cloud Actualization. Dynamic workload balancing across multiple utility clouds. Applications are distributed based on cloud capacity, cost, proximity to user and other criteria.