The report suggests that cloud computing is the convergence of two distinct technological streams. The first is the maturing of the technological infrastructure to the point that it is now capable of enabling cloud computing. These developments include more reliable Internet services coupled with virtualization techniques that enable computing facilities to be replicated easily.
The second stream is a service perspective on computing, which focuses on providing computing capability as a service that is consumed as and when required rather than as a one-off, one-size-must-fit-all capability.
In order to understand how the various cloud offerings differ from existing solutions, the authors have defined a set of dimensions that enable easy comparison. Crucially, this “Desires Framework” strips out the marketing hype of cloud and allows organizations to focus on the specific differences and make sensible decisions.
The framework consists of four dimensions:
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Equivalence: The desire to provide services that are at least equivalent in quality to that experienced by a locally-running service on a PC or server.
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Abstraction: The desire to hide unnecessary complexity at the lower levels of the application stack.
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Automation: The desire to manage the running of a service automatically.
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Tailoring: The desire to tailor the provided service for specific enterprise needs.
These dimensions can be used to evaluate the four key types of cloud computing offerings: software as a service, platform as a service, infrastructure as a service and hosted services.