Cloud Communications

Cloud Communications Feature

June 21, 2011

Hybrid Clouds: The Best of Both Worlds

By Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor

The concept of cloud computing is attractive to many businesses, but for larger enterprises especially, the issues of security and reliability tend to stop this technology from deployed. There is an option, however, that provides a happy medium: a private cloud.

“Private clouds provide visibility, trust and control,” noted David Butler, Vice President of Marketing at Eucalyptus Systems (News - Alert), during a TMCnet video interview at Cloud Expo 2011 in New York. “In many cases, enterprises want to have complete visibility into what’s underneath the cloud.”

Using tried-and-true open source technology, that security and visibility is exactly what Eucalyptus provides. The company, founded three years ago in California, offers a software platform for private, on-premise infrastructure-as-a-service clouds.

The company’s customers are Fortune 100 and Fortune 2000 firms looking for a way to migrate from virtualization platforms to formal IaaS. The concept is to create a private, firewall-protected version of an Amazon-style cloud.

Some customers, Butler noted, opt to create a hybrid cloud infrastructure, utilizing private cloud for most functions but “bursting” to auxiliary public clouds during periods of high volume such as a retail surge during the Christmas holiday season.

Eucalyptus offers complete compatibility with Amazon, which is a primary source for public cloud bursting. Two customers that employ this strategy are WetPaint.com and Puma.com; both companies offer content that at times drives demand beyond what the private cloud can handle, which is where the elasticity of a hybrid cloud comes into play.

With hybrid clouds in mind, Eucalyptus recently began bundling its software with RightScale’s myCloud platform, forming a single management solution for public and private clouds.

Butler acknowledged that there are two evolutionary steps every customer must go through to leverage cloud computing. First, they must create a virtualized set of resources, including servers and other network infrastructure. Then, the appropriate people and processes must be put in place to support the cloud.

That second step is often the most challenging.

“Moving to the cloud is much less of a technology issue at the infrastructure level today than it ever has been before,” Butler said.

For more about cloud technology, including planning for public cloud outages, the future emergence of platforms-as-a-service, and near-term advantages of cloud technology, watch the full video interview.


Mae Kowalke is a TMCnet contributor. She is Manager of Stories at Neundorfer, Inc., a cleantech company in Northeast Ohio. She has more than 10 years experience in journalism, marketing and communications, and has a passion for new tech gadgets. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Rich Steeves
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