Starting up a cloud computing deployment is a case of just choosing a cloud and switching it on, right? Kind of, yes. Cloud ‘instances’ can be ‘spun up’ inside 60 seconds — but obviously it’s not quite that simple. Customers will need to choose between public, private (on-premises) or some hybrid combination of both.

CLUE: The answer to the title is the last line of this post.

Deeper still, cloud comes in many shapes, colors and flavors. Firms can opt for a cloud that has been ‘provisioned’ (or tuned, if you prefer) for specific performance characteristics such as:

– Storage optimized
– Compute processing optimized (with ‘burstable’ CPU even)
– Input/Output optimized
– Memory performance optimized
– Network connectivity optimized

Cloud providers today even offer a set of ‘general purpose’ instances. It’s not hard to draw an analogy between cloud computing and racing cars i.e. wet weather tires for specific conditions, off-road equipment for bumpy terrain… and so on.

SOURCE: forbes.com