Kloeckner: Explaining the nature of cloud computing

Kloeckner defines cloud computing as a "huge switch", giving organizations more options on how and where to deploy applications.

"We are transforming from the builders and owners of IT assets to an organization that provides the source of IT resources," says Kloeckner. This is the journey of cloud computing. ”

Kloeckner admits he has encountered questions from customers about the cloud. Someone told him that they were already doing hosting and virtualization, and did not see the difference between this and the cloud. But there is an essential difference, according to Kloeckner.

"Cloud computing is a perfect storm in terms of changing IT service consumption and delivery," says Kloeckner. "In his view, cloud computing has a number of notable features compared to previous models, one of which is the ability to allocate on-demand services, provide ubiquitous access to the Internet, be geographically restrictive, and express resilience."

"Our customers are using cloud computing based on workload similarity," he said. "For example, whether their workloads can be migrated or whether they are hindered by business rules or other requirements."

But for Kloeckner, IBM has a large number of customers migrating to the cloud, including the USAF and Panasonic, which will increase their efficiency and it capital utilization.

The similarity concept of workload is closely related to mobility. Simon Crosby, chief technology officer of the Citrix Data Center and Cloud Department, explained in the topic discussion that the mobility of virtualization is the key.

Citrix supports Xen hypervisor, but realistic hypervisor should not be a barrier to virtual application delivery, and there is now a standard package format for virtual machines--open virtualization Format (OVF).

"OVF is a packaged format that allows you to package multiple layers of an application so that the workload is not limited by a particular hypervisor," says Crosby. Virtualization is now a prerequisite for everyone, and no one is limited to the specific virtualization application packaging format. ”

Crosby adds that with the mobility of applications implemented by virtualization and cloud delivery models, businesses can place their workloads at the highest cost. In his view, the task of enterprise it is not just to build the infrastructure.

"It is the task of the IT department to devote resources to components that are strategically critical to their business," he said. ”