Public Cloud IaaS : A Price/Performance vs. Security Analysis

Firebrand Announces 2017 Accelerated CloudMASTER® Dates

By G C Network | December 23, 2016

Firebrand, the leader in Accelerated Learning, has recently announced it’s 2017 delivery schedule for their accelerated CloudMASTER® training course. Delivered in partnership with Logical Operations and the NCTA, this unique…

TAP Accelerates Artificial Intelligence

By G C Network | December 21, 2016

Photo credit: Shutterstock Over the past few years, the use of artificial intelligence has expanded more rapidly than many of us could have imagined. While this may invoke fear and…

Cognitive on Cloud

By G C Network | December 20, 2016

Photo credit: Shutterstock According to the IBM Institute for Business Value the market will see a rapid adoption of initial cognitive systems. The most likely candidates have moved beyond descriptive…

Europe: NCTA CloudMASTER® Hotspot

By G C Network | November 29, 2016

The ongoing digital transformation continues to generate a steady demand for workers with increasingly sophisticated digital skills. This process is multi-dimensional and workers with these highly specialized skills are very…

Smart Manufacturing Is Cloud Computing

By G C Network | November 27, 2016

As cloud computing simultaneously transforms multiple industries many have wondered about how this trend will affect manufacturing. Often characterized as “staid”, this vertical is not often cited when leading edge…

George Youmans, Jr.: The CloudMASTER Fashionista!

By G C Network | November 23, 2016

So how could a NCTA Certified CloudMASTER accelerate his career in the fashion industry? To answer that question, you would need to catch up with George Youmans, Jr. He has…

Is Cloud Interoperability a Myth?

By G C Network | November 20, 2016

Photo credit: Shutterstock As the industry matures, cloud computing will increasingly rely on interoperability in order to grow and deliver more value to industry. Assuming this is a fact, what…

Should Data Centers Think?

By G C Network | November 10, 2016

As cloud computing becomes the information technology mainstream, data center technology is accelerating at a breakneck speed. Concepts like software define infrastructure, data center analytics and Nonvolatile Memory Express (NVMe)…

For Top Cyber Threats, Look in the Mirror

By G C Network | October 31, 2016

A recent report by Praetorian, a cybersecurity company headquartered in Austin, TX, focused on threats that resulted in data compromise or access to sensitive information. Based on a review of…

Your Choice: Cloud Technician or Digital Transformer

By G C Network | October 28, 2016

The CompTIA Cloud+certification validates the skills and expertise of IT practitioners in implementing and maintaining cloud technologies.  This is exactly what it takes to become a good cloud technician.  In…

Industry’s transition from custom made, one-of-a-kind IT infrastructures to the standardize, commodity based cloud paradigm is well on it’s way. IBM’s recent “Under Cloud Cover” study highlights the rapidly of this global transformation:

“According to our global study of more than 800 cloud decision makers and 
users, business leaders of all stripes – Finance, Sales & Marketing, Product 
Development and more – are becoming increasingly focused on the business value 
cloud provides. Over the next three years, cloud’s strategic importance to business 
users is expected to double from 34 percent to 72 percent, even surpassing their IT 
counterparts at 58 percent.”

From IBM “Under Cloud Cover”: Competitive advantages from 
cloud computing help leading organizations deliver stand-out
 financial performance . (Click to enlarge)
https://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/ciw03086usen/CIW03086USEN.PDF

What seems surprising, however, is that this shift is happening even in the face of repeated cautions and warnings about the security of public clouds.  The key challenge for decision makers is how to balance the business need to quickly transition to cloud with the equally important business need of maintaining information security and privacy.

Lucky for us, two recent public cloud reports from Gartner and Cloud Spectator have gone a long way toward addressing this critical question. Gartner’s “Toolkit: Comparison Matrix for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service Providers, 2013” provides a comparative scoring of the security and compliance capabilities of the Gartner Public IaaS Magic Quadrant companies while Cloud Spectator has recently provided a price/performance  scoring for the same group of companies. I’ve used this data to produce the Price/Performance vs Security chart below.

Click to enlarge

While this marketplace snapshot is definitely not definitive, this data should certainly help us all who are charged with managing this important transition.

( The Price-Performance score is a blend of technical performance obtained from Cloud Spectator and use case performance obtained from Gartner. In the chart, the higher the value on the vertical axis, the better. Security score was obtained from Gartner. The further to the right on the horizontal axis, the better. Since CSC was not included in Cloud Spectator’s performance analysis they are also not included in the chart provided above.)


( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS – © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

P

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

G C Network

2 Comments

  1. Kenny Li on October 26, 2013 at 5:55 am

    Very interesting take on the two analyses, Kevin!

    Just out of curiosity, which price/performance values did you use from the Cloud Spectator report? The system performance?

    The information here is well-illustrated, and simplifies a range of concerns brought up in the cloud industry. Thanks for the post, and I look forward to seeing more information like this in the future.



  2. Kevin L. Jackson on October 29, 2013 at 10:48 pm

    Thanks. I just updated to post in order to clarify data origin. The Price-Performance score is a blend of technical performance (CloudSpec Score) obtained from Cloud Spectator and use case performance obtained from Gartner. I then normalized the values using equal weight. In the chart, the higher the value on the vertical axis, the better. Security score was obtained from Gartner. The further to the right on the horizontal axis, the better.