First from a very enlightening article by Charles Babcock:
Zynga’s approach turns conventional cloud computing thinking on its head. The most frequently mentioned case for the hybrid approach of blending private and public clouds is “cloud bursting,” where the in-house data center runs the bulk of the load, spots a spike building, and offloads that extra work to the public cloud. Zynga does the opposite, launching games in the cloud when demand is lowest–as is predictability.
I loved this approach – unconventional, effective, and ultimately – cost-effective. Let’s examine the facts:
1. Cloud computing today on the public cloud is limited to dev/test scenarios – mainly because of the prohibitive costs of running a cloud operation 24X7. It’s cheaper to own your datacenter in the long run.
2. Hybrid scenarios typically talk about “burst capacity” – the ability to meet increased demand with rapid provisioning ; the issue here is that most companies except startups have invested in DC capacity and feel comfortable in handling periodic spikes with current investments, without introducing the cloud providers and adding another dimension of complexity of management.
3. AWS failure – yes, bad stuff happens. It happens in enterprise data centers too – all the time, except its not on the front page of the media. What’s that saying about a tree that falls in the forest makes no noise?
The key takeaways for me were: Align cloud usage to business usage
If a product launch is pending, the business unknowns are the most high; use cloud to mitigate that risk. When a demand pattern emerges, move it in-house to save costs.
* Do not make assumptions on an external providers architecture; due diligence is key to understand the weaknesses
* Cloud strategy needs to have a clear overarching architecture that owns both private and public parts, and the interaction thereof; the ability to move workloads inhouse is key.
* Do not skimp on Disaster Recovery plans. Understand that geo-location of datacenters is a key factor no matter how its spun (zones, areas, etc etc)
