The Purposeful Clouds Cloud Cube

The Cloud is complex; full of fancy acronyms and terms, and is constantly evolving. To try to get the basics “back into the box” and explain how we help, we created our Cloud Cube.

For help with all of these acronyms and terms, see our Cloud Glossary.

The front face depicts the three major types of Cloud service delivery options: infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS) and software (SaaS) as a service. The complexity of what is delivered increases as you move up the face, as does the loss of control, especially over security issues. On the other hand, the amount of valuable help and operational control that your Cloud Service Provider (CSP) can provide also increases.

The right face shows the four major Cloud business models that define how your CSP delivers your Cloud implementation. It one extreme it could be a Private Cloud where you have a lot of control and minimal infrastructure sharing. At the other extreme is a Public Cloud where you have minimal control and are sharing the infrastructure with hundreds or thousands of other CSP customers. A relatively new addition is the Community Cloud, a Public Cloud that is restricted to customers with similar requirements, often in the area of security or process. We believe most organizations will eventually end up with a combination of Public, Private and Community Clouds implementations to meet the various needs of their workloads' requirements. Such a combination of implementations is called a Hybrid Cloud.

The top face represents the many different types of Cloud solutions, from cross-industry solutions like test and development, or collaboration; or specific solutions for financial, healthcare, or other lines-of-business; to specific technology solutions like high-performance computing. Each of these solutions can be implemented, naturally, in any of the “... as a service” types and in any of the delivery models.

Each of your workloads will likely have a different set of requirements in the areas of security, performance, and availability. Those requirements determine where in the Cloud Cube that workload belongs. What makes the Cloud work is having a deep understanding of the myriad of options so you can select the correct space, or more likely, spaces, in the Cloud Cube for you. This will ensure that you can transition into, around in, and out of the Cloud without disrupting your business and still maintain the appropriate level of security for you and your customer’s data with the right performance and availability characteristics to allow your business to grow.

That unique and business-effective understanding is what Purposeful Clouds delivers through our Professional Services and the Purposeful Clouds Academy.

We can help. Contact Us with your questions.