平臺即服務將贏得開發人員的青睞

????以開發人員為中心的云計算基礎設施（IaaS）服務發展迅速，可以提供高效率環境，用于快速應用程序的開發和配置。但平臺即服務（PaaS）則可以進一步簡化開發過程，可使應用程序開發人員的生產率與靈活性實現巨大飛躍。因為它可抽象出虛擬設備、操作系統和其他與應用程序開發沒有密切關系的附加細節。對于應用程序轉換或全新應用程序，PaaS可以為開發人員提供一個效率更高的開發環境。這意味著，面向開發人員為的IaaS云業務將面臨業務下滑。

服務故障將提高公眾對服務質量差異的認識

????之前，許多人誤認為，云計算服務能夠保證一切性能和運行時間的要求。但2011年，亞馬遜（Amazon）經歷的服務中斷卻讓人們警醒。好消息是：目前已經有數百家云計算服務供應商，它們可以提供服務級別有保障的云計算服；而且還自行設計其云產品，因此也更為可靠。

????而這也打破了之前的一種認識，即云計算是像電力一樣的商品。但實際情況并非如此——細節非常重要，任何你不了解的情況都可能損害云應用。云服務也存在質量差別，例如通過投資基礎設施、人力和流程實現的高可用性，而這些也是服務提供商之間的區別所在。如果云服務在設計時，在高可用性方面投入很少或者沒有任何投入，它可能價格低廉，但用戶則必須拿出資金，從頭設計、編寫和操作自己的可用性系統。

機構仍將認為，私有云像霍格沃茨魔法學校一樣，擁有神奇的安全防護能力。

????熟悉哈利波特的讀者都知道，霍格沃茨魔法學校（the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry）有魔法保護，幫助學校里面的居民抵御邪惡勢力的入侵。公司的機房不可能具有這樣的魔力，但人們卻想當然地認為機房之外任何云設施的首要特性就是安全。

????而真正重要的是現有的安全管理措施，以及審查和驗證這些管理措施是否可行和是否運行正常的流程。這一條可謂放之四海而皆準，不論私有云歸公司所有，還是由第三方提供商提供，或者由公司租賃。擁有或租賃機房不會讓公司獲得魔法保護。從根本上來說，認為事實不容質疑是一種非理性的想法，這也是為什么這種想法經久不衰的原因。只有進一步擴大外部云服務的使用范圍，習慣這種服務，提高其接受度，這種情況才會改變。

????本文作者馬休?洛奇，為虛擬機軟件公司VMware的云服務部高級總監。馬休先生在云計算技術與產品領先能力方面擁有20多年的豐富經驗。他曾為多個項目創建編譯器和分布式系統，如國際空間站（International Space Station）等，并幫助六個國家首次接通互聯網，還曾在思科（Cisco）負責管理價值超過6.3億美元的路由器產品。加入VMware之前，馬休曾在賽門鐵克公司（Symantec）擔任高級總監，曾負責價值超過10億美元的信息管理組建的上市。

Platform-as-a-Service will win the hearts of developers.

????Developer-centric cloud infrastructure (IaaS) services have grown rapidly by providing high productivity environments for rapid application development and deployment. But platform-as-a-service (PaaS) represents a quantum leap in productivity and flexibility for application developers by further simplifying the development process. It does this by abstracting away virtual machines, operating systems and other extraneous details that are not germane to application development. For application transformation or brand new applications, PaaS is simply a more productive environment for developers. And that means less business for IaaS clouds targeting developers.

Further outages will drive awareness of differences in service quality.

????Amazon's (AMZN) well-publicized 2011 outages were a wake-up call for many who had erroneously assumed that there was any kind of performance or uptime guarantee for a cloud service. The good news: there are hundreds of cloud providers who offer actual service level guarantees and who have engineered their cloud offerings so they're inherently more reliable.

????This shatters the notion that cloud computing is a commodity like electricity. It isn't -- the details matter, and what you don't know can hurt your cloud application. There are qualities of a cloud service like high availability that are delivered through investment in infrastructure, people and processes -- and that's what differentiates providers. Clouds engineered with little or no investment in high availability may be superficially cheap, but you'll have to pay to devise, code and operate your own availability systems from scratch.

Organizations will continue to assume that private clouds have Hogwarts-like magical security protections.

????Those familiar with Harry Potter know that the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is magically protected against those who would do its inhabitants ill. The same cannot be said for your organization's own four walls, but this seems to be the fundamental assumption applied to private clouds: the top objection to any kind of off-premises cloud is security.

????All that matters are the actual security controls in place, and the processes to audit and verify that those controls are in fact there and functioning correctly. This is universally true, regardless of whether you own the walls, lease them, or they belong to a third party provider. Owning or leasing the walls doesn't gain you magical protection. Fundamentally, this is an irrational belief that mere facts cannot challenge, which is why it will persist until there is more widespread experience, comfort and acceptance of off-premises providers.

????Mathew Lodge is Senior Director in VMware's Cloud Services group. Mathew has 20 years' diverse experience in cloud computing and product leadership. He has built compilers and distributed systems for projects like the International Space Station, helped connect six countries to the Internet for the first time, and managed a $630 million-plus router product line at Cisco. Prior to VMware, Mathew was Senior Director at Symantec, where he led go-to-market for its $1 billion-plus information management group.