FOUNDATION TOPICS
APPLICATION DEPLOYMENT MODELS
The concept of cloud has wormed its way into almost
every facet of modern life. It has become central to how
we interact with our friends, buy things, watch TV and
movies, and run our businesses. So what is it really?
Well, that is a very subjective question that has to take
into account your own personal perspective. If you asked
five people what cloud is, you would probably get eight
different answers. Nearly half of all business meetings
about cloud, when it was in its infancy, were spent on
determining what it was and how it could be used. Is it a
service? Is it a product? Is it something magical that will
solve all business problems?
The biggest issue with this line of thinking is trying to
call cloud a “thing” in the first place. The key value of
cloud is that it gives you a new way of operating IT—
allowing it to be fast, agile, and able to align better to the
goals of the business. From this perspective, cloud can
help transform manual and inefficient processes into
something the business can use as a competitive
advantage and a way to better serve customers. The
strength of cloud is realized in the speed and agility it
affords as an operational model to get applications
deployed and providing value more quickly. Cloud has
fundamentally changed how we think about building and
operationalizing applications.
Today Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Cisco, and others
offer cloud services. Many startups are building their
applications and services completely in the cloud. Uber,
for example, has completely transformed the
transportation industry through a cloud-based
application that allows us to easily find someone willing
to pick us up and take us where we want to go. Square
has transformed credit card processing by allowing