ABSTRACT
Network, compute, and storage are the three legs of the stool that make computers useful. And because of advancements in networking, security, and storage networking, compute, clients, and storage are no longer constrained to reside in one physical location; separation is feasible. “Cloud” and “hybrid-cloud” are buzzwords that mean different things to different people. In terms of private cloud evolving to hybrid cloud, private clouds are an unshared compute/net/storage resource; hybrid clouds use traditional in-house IT for hot data and managed hosting for cooler data. Natural application divisions allow targeting of low-volume/low-access data to be pushed to the cloud. Managed hosting offers an increasing spectrum of optional things to buy, including applications like Exchange or SharePoint, various compute capabilities, and storage options from direct attached storage all the way to dedicated storage area network storage.
