Brad Vaughan

A classic use of ROI or its twin TCO is in the Microsoft Economics of the Cloud, Nov 2010 paper. The conclusion is you can improve TCO by up to 80% by using applications in public cloud versus on-premise deployment. The basics of the calculation being: improved utilization (10% to 90%) enabled by virtualization/consolidation & elasticity the economies (power, operations, HW purchase etc..) of scale of multi-tenant cloud scale hosting Given most costs in a DC are directly linked to the amount of infrastructure deployed, then improving utilization from 10% to 90% sounds like the primary justification for the 80% improvement. The misuse of the information is not more evident that when Phil Wainewright writes that the strength of this "research" is enough to put the nail in the coffin of the concept of private cloud. Definitive words indeed.. The problem I have with this... (more)

AWS and the Public Cloud Market

The public cloud market is dominated by a 800 pound gorilla. We assume its 800 pounds and not 2000 pounds. It could even be 100 pounds or maybe not a gorilla, but an elephant of a paler color. There is no public information indicating its true size, revenue or performance. Let’s assume based on the marketing information it's 800 pounds and a gorilla. The recent release of the dedicated instance feature within Amazon Web Services has shone a spotlight on a possible future of public cloud. A proof point that cloud and the traditional hosting model might exist on the same continuum... (more)

The Importance of Many Clouds

Looking forward to the Redhat Summit this week in Boston with a theme of “Platform, Middleware, Virtualization, Cloud”. The cloud market is dominated by a lot of startups, with some goliath-size companies still waiting in the wings. Depending your point of view, they are either lumbering dinosaurs unaware of the next evolutionary shift, or if you are like me, I think they are poised to strike. If you believe enterprise adoption is the next wave of cloud adoption, then these organizations have huge salesforces with deep customer relationships and services organizations capable of ... (more)

What the Cloud Is Not – Myths and Misnomers

This story has moved to http://hareshparekh.ulitzer.com/node/1772591 ... (more)

It’s War: Public vs. Private Cloud Computing

There is a common question that almost universally arises when people discuss cloud computing. The question came up in a webinar I did with Rackspace last week. It was featured in regular conversation at Cloud Connect and then again on Twitter from Adrian Cockcroft. The question was framed like; "There is no technical reason for private cloud, it's all $, FUD, and internal politics. Discuss." - Adrian Cockcroft, Do you think there is a need for private clouds (vs. public)? Important to note we are not talking whether they should run on a cloud. This argument only applies to applic... (more)