The Case For and Against Private Clouds
Cloud Computing Definitions and Solutions

Speaking at the Cloud Computing Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, Calif., Richard Marcello, president of technology, consulting, and integration solutions at Unisys, presented what he viewed as myths and truths about cloud computing, touching on both privately deployed clouds and public clouds. Covering the so-called myth that private clouds have no benefits over virtualization, Marcello said Unisys has deployed a private cloud internally and cut provisioning times from 10 days of manual provisioning time down to five minutes.

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"We were able to eliminate a whole bunch of actually U.S.-based jobs and kind of replace them with two folks out of India to serve a 1,200-person engineering organization," Marcello said.

Loss of IT jobs by U.S. workers has been a hot-button issue. Interviewed after his presentation, Marcello said cloud computing must be approached from a company perspective. "If people don't embrace cloud computing, I don't think the companies will be around in 5 to 10 years. I think you have to take that broader, holistic view," he said.

His point, Marcello, said was not so much about U.S. vs. India in the IT job space.  "It was more around the fact that it could be managed remotely" with fewer people, and thus saving money, Marcello said.

Marcello defined private clouds as a style of computing that delivers self-provisioned, automated IT capabilities as services to internal users on an as-needed and immediate basis.  Private clouds feature virtualization and more and can serve as an entry point into cloud computing, he said.

During his talk, he stressed the urgency of cloud computing.

"Cloud computing is going to change everything, and you guys better get your act together," said Marcello.

He described cloud computing as "an evolutionary revolution."  It is revolutionary from a business perspective, while from a technology perspective it is about inheritance and convergence, taking the best of the Internet, distributed computing, and mainframes. Cloud computing also features technologies for virtualization, automation, and self-service, he said

Cloud computing will produce new business models and enable startups to compete with enterprise companies, he said.  Meanwhile, benefits are offered such as matching financial risk to monthly return in use of computers via pay-as-you-go cloud services, according to Marcello.