The Cloud Computing Layer Cake – What must you be able to do?

So what are the generally accepted characteristics of cloud computing, What must a private cloud be able to do?

I will summarise them here:

1. On-demand self service
Users of cloud services can request and get access to the applications they want when they want with little or no provider intervention

2. Ubiquitous network access
Users of cloud services should be able to exploit internet technologies to securely gain access to their applications and data wherever they are regardless of geography

3. Metered use
Users of cloud services should be able to consume services knowing that they will only be charged for services and resources they have actually used

4. Elasticity
The ability to anticipate, manage, measure and increase or decrease the responsiveness of an application based on the real time usage demands placed on an infrastructure using shared or pooled computing resources.

5. Resource pooling
By their very nature, cloud computing environments should be based on shared environments that allow resources to be securely pooled in transparent way that allow elasticity and resource efficiency
You cannot think of private cloud computing just in terms of these higher order characteristics, you need to consider the deployment models, these ways of consuming cloud services are referred to as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS).