Cloud Appliance the Boat for Enterprise Cloud Computing

Cloud Appliances

A cloud appliance is an off the shelf computing  equipment delivered fully assembled and tested, with the software stack loaded and configured. When the appliance is connected to the power and network and turned on, it works. This is one of the easiest methods to build a private cloud as an IAAS deployment, so if you had three cloud appliances in three data centers and a network, all you need is to plug in the three cloud appliances and Presto you have an enterprise (private)  cloud. 

Cloud Appliance the Boat for Enterprise Cloud Computing

all photos in this blog courtesy Ajay Gopal (aj2z on Twitter)

Today's cloud appliance are more matured and can be deployed for connecting to the public cloud thus creating a hybrid cloud. So now you have your enterprise private cloud and you can connect to the large and powerful public cloud using the cloud appliance. 

This allows the the enterprise to use the cloud appliance as a boat to the public cloud and when the enterprise is ready it can discard its own private cloud by pulling the plug on the cloud appliance (Boat).
I call the cloud appliance a  Boat and not a Bridge because the cloud appliance is used like a boat to cross a body of water at the end of the crossing you leave the boat behind whereas a Bridge is a permanent  structure and is a continuous link . 
As understanding the cloud offering and the marriage with the cloud service providers strengthens, the enterprise  can  abandon the boat and board the Mother ship ( Public Cloud). Of course if the business still requires it  can continue to run the enterprise private cloud and leverage on the public cloud thus benefiting from the strength and security  of a hybrid cloud. 
The business/enterprise will decide on what will run on the Public Cloud and what will run on the enterprise (private) cloud.  The Control remains with the business until it Trusts the public cloud . 

Barriers to using the Powerful Public cloud will be overcome with use of Cloud Appliance. 

The introduction of the cloud appliance accelerates the adoption of the public cloud by the enterprise with the comfort of the CIO/CTO  that the team members and technology investments will not be made redundant immediately, rather they will be phased out in a structured and planned time frame. 
Many cloud service providers and appliance vendors  have introduced or have plans to introduce cloud appliances, they include, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, HP, AMAX offers CloudMax, Intalio and OpenBravo Cloud Appliance to name a few. 


IBM's Cloud Appliance
IBM's offering of Cloud Appliance is its  Workload Deployer v3.0 and WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance V2.0.
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/webservers/workload-deployer/features/index.html?S_CMP=wspace

IBM will now be able to offer its Enterprise Customer a ride into Public Cloud Computing offered by IBM which has almost all the popular  Enterprise Applications under its Hood. 

This will allow BIG BLUE an accelerated ride into the cloud computing market and I can sign off by stating that the Elephant has not Forgotten to Dance. 
Footnote: This post was inspired by Mr. Anupam Garg (anupam.gaur@in.ibm.com) of IBM who shared about  IBM's cloud appliance offering at the Mumbai Cloud Camp last week.