Cloud Computing vs Virtualisation

Another fairly common question - and worth answering as it is quite topical.



Both have a common objective of abstracting what you want to do from where it is done. There are some fairly clear differences though.

• Cloud Computing is a deployment architecture as I previously mentioned. From a consumer's perspective it means that the user is not aware (philosophically speaking) of where the service is executed (i.e. could be in any data centre, on any server, anywhere in the world as long as the SLA is met).
  

• Virtualisation by contrast is a term describes the decoupling of software from hardware (at its simplest level). The term can be employed more widely to refer to any level of abstraction, including data centres. Decoupling software enables a business to make deploy-time and run-time decisions about where to deploy a software stack. Benefits include resource maximisation, eg server consolidation, and resilience by moving a software stack between machines as and when required.
  

These terms and concepts will intersect as a service deployed within a cloud could be part of an application software stack that is virtualised on a hardware/resource stack.

Ideally the cloud platform itself is virtualised, in order to scale quickly, which many argue is a key characteristic of a cloud platform.