Cloud Services vs Cloud Computing

Market research company IDC is working to distinguish between “cloud services” and “cloud computing”. According to IDC Senior Vice President & Chief Analyst Frank Gens, cloud services are “consumer and business products, services and solutions that are delivered and consumed in real-time over the Internet”, while cloud computing is “an emerging IT development, deployment and delivery model, enabling real-time delivery of products, services and solutions over the Internet (i.e., enabling cloud services)”. True cloud services have all 8 of the following attributes:

Offsite, provided by third-party provider 

Accessed via the Internet 

Minimal/no IT skills to “implement” 

Provisioning that is self-service, with near real-time deployment

Pricing that is fine-grained and usage based

User Interface that is browser based

System Interface that is based on web services APIs

Shared resources/common versions of services that can be configured for personalization

This is a useful distinction, as the present cloud computing metaphor confuses the computing aspects with the content. Most people using the cloud services are only interested in the content available. (GW)

Defining “Cloud Services” and “Cloud Computing” | IDC Exchange | Frank Gens | 23 September 2008

Tagged as: cloud computing