Cloud Computing for the Rest of Us

Use Cases

Given Cloud's nascent nature, there is a need to identify use case to help people to both understand Cloud Computing and see what are the appropriate Cloud applications to build. The Cloud Computing Use Case Discussion Group was formed to capture specific use cases as a way to describe and benchmark the emerging Cloud usage in the wild. Their most recent v4 white paper (link below) is worth a look.

At the very fundamental level, some combination of the four potentially actors - End user, Enterprise, Public Cloud, and Private Cloud - constitute a Cloud usage. There are two scenarios that I believe will become increasingly prevalent over time. One is the idea of "cloud bursting" whereby demand spike is met by accessing the public cloud. An use case was an insurance company expecting to process a large volume of claim after a natural disaster. Instead of putting the extra load onto the existing infrastructure and causing a system wide impact on other businesses and regions, it used the public cloud to handle excess traffic instead of investing in additional internal IT infrastructure that would have sat idle after the event.

The second scenario is to use the cloud for machine-to-machine process with no end user in mind. In the use case, an agency needs to conduct computing intensive processes over a growing large dataset. Instead of building up a physical infrastructure for the job, it was able to achieve the same result at 50% of the cost and without the setup time require for their own datacenter.

A Business Tool

The hot issues surrounding Cloud Computing are not technical in nature. For example, security and SLA (Service Level Agreement) speak to the nature of the user's business processes and needs. Only the business operators have the appropriate context to determine if a vendor's security and SLA are sufficient.

Newly enacted legal and professional requirements related to the location of the data and users are likely to be felt by enterprises as they expand market coverage through the Cloud. Different countries and regions have regulations on where specific data can reside physically. Similarly, contractual agreements such as digital rights management will also determine where and how a consumer can access information delivered through cloud.

http://cloudusecases.org/