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

Convergence: The Catalyst to Transform Scientific Research

By G C Network | January 7, 2015

by Melvin Greer  Greer Institute for Leadership and Innovation A new transformative research approach is gaining global attention and adoption. The scientific opportunities enabled by convergence—the coming together of insights…

Cloud Computing Promises: Fact or Fiction

By G C Network | December 29, 2014

Cloud computing is currently making information technology headlines, and vendors are aggressively promoting the many benefits it can provide organizations. This White Paper addresses the claims and questions that are…

Super Smart Person’s Guide to Cloud Computing – San Diego

By G C Network | December 24, 2014

We are offering a fun and educational event just about the cloud. This session will help CEOs, Directors, Managers, and Dilberts learn what the heck the cloud is all about.…

A Managed Services Business Owners Lament: A talk with Joe D.

By G C Network | December 22, 2014

 by Kevin L. Jackson A few days ago I received a call from a small business owner asking if I would meet him for coffee.  He wanted to run some…

Technology and the Evolving Workforce

By G C Network | December 17, 2014

by Melvin Greer Managing Director Greer Institute for Leadership and Innovation According to a Greer Institute Workforce and Talent study, the 2020 workforce is both “the most educated and culturally…

Security attacks and countermeasures

By G C Network | December 14, 2014

by Sandra K. Johnson   Cyber security is rapidly becoming a significant issue in the C-suite as well as the population at large. The results of Dell’s Global Technology Adoption…

ITIL in 7 Minutes!

By G C Network | December 9, 2014

What is ITIL & how can it benefit your organization? Learn the answers to these questions plus gain an understanding of the ITIL Service Lifecycle in this video.  Download a…

How Resilient are FedRAMP Clouds Anyway?

By G C Network | December 8, 2014

By Jodi Kohut For the uninitiated, FedRAMP is the Federal Risk Authorizationand Management Program, a government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for…

Federal Tech Talk: Cloud Transition Challenges in Government and Industry

By G C Network | December 2, 2014

Cloud Computing is revolutionizing today’s business marketplace. While “learning the art of the possible”, corporate executives today are struggling with the business and security challenges associate with this important transition. Just…

Cloud, Mobile, Social and Cyber: 2015 Predictions That Will Rock The World (AGAIN!)

By G C Network | December 1, 2014

2015 PREDICTION TIME!! The worlds of cloud, mobile, social and cyber will continue expanding, permuting and recombining. Their individual effect on society and commerce will become moot as these technological…

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.