Most IT professionals have heard of the cloud computing concept, but relatively few truly grasp what it is supposed to deliver or understand the technology behind it.

What is clear, however, is that vendors are betting big on cloud computing being the next-generation platform of choice for users.

With its origins in the grid computing services that have been offered by vendors such as Sun Microsystems and IBM for a number of years, cloud computing is essentially a method of outsourcing intensive IT operations to third-party service providers. These providers take over much of the responsibility for delivering applications and performance to organisations that would rather not go to the effort or expense of running their own datacentres.

A multitude of IT equipment vendors and service providers, ranging from server and storage specialists to telcos, are pressing ahead with plans to deliver cloud computing services as soon as possible.

Global telecommunications giant AT&T recently announced a utility computing service, Synaptic Hosting, designed to provide organisations with managed networking, security and storage options. Using telecommunications hubs, or “super internet datacentres” in the US, Europe and Asia, the company will provide companies with computing resources and applications on demand.

IBM earlier this month announced it was spending $360m (£187m) on building two new datacentres dedicated to the provision of cloud computing services, while HP, Intel and Yahoo are collaborating on providing a research platform for potential customers to test cloud computing services in specially designed facilities.

“Everything changes and nothing changes. Cloud computing is nothing new, it is just virtualisation stuck on top of grid computing,” said Clive Longbottom, service director at analyst Quocirca.

“The grid was all the rage four to five years ago, and virtualisation was all the rage last year, and is still strong in the pure commercial sectors. But for large service providers, it is seen as a little bit passé. So now they are saying: ‘How can we take masses of commodity services and turn them into completely dynamic virtualised environments, and turn it into the cloud?’”

IBM, for one, does not necessarily agree. Pol Mac Aonghusa, chief technology officer at IBM’s Dublin Cloud datacentre, said: “There is a bit of an overlap with grid computing infrastructures, but cloud computing is an infrastructure that sits on top of a datacentre ­ for efficiency.

“A grid is a set of machines that you run a programme on. The grid is specificially designed for a particular job. The cloud is designed to run a larger variety of workloads ­ the cloud can become a confusing amalgam of hardware, infrastructure, network, and software.”

While confident of IBM’s approach, Mac Aonghusa said other vendors have their own visions for the cloud. The big question is the current extent of user demand.
Organisations that have spent millions building or upgrading their own datacentres in the past few years are unlikely to scrap those investments in favour of outsourcing just yet. “If you went into the top 100 FTSE organisations and asked them about it, they would probably say: ‘What the hell are you going on about?’” said Longbottom. “It has been covered a lot in the press and by the analyst companies, but it is still not out there in people’s heads.”