"What makes Cloud Computing more likely to be successful today are both technological and attitudinal changes in the market," noted Tom Trainer, Director of Product Marketing at Gluster, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. "First, commodity computing and storage and virtualization techniques mean that these services can be delivered at price points that make it more than economically feasible," Trainer continued. "Second, Internet bandwidths make it possible to upload large amounts of data to and from these cloud-based infrastructures, easing the choice of platform."

Cloud Computing Journal: A very general question first, about Cloud Computing itself: Surely we've heard all of this before in various forms and guises - grid computing / utility computing, etc.? What is different this time - why is everyone so convinced it will now work?

Tom Trainer: There are certainly some similarities between Cloud Computing and previous instantiations of web-based computing. What makes it more likely to be successful today are both technological and attitudinal changes in the market. First, commodity computing and storage and virtualization techniques mean that these services can be delivered at price points that make it more than economically feasible. It is economically desirable. Second, Internet bandwidths make it possible to upload large amounts of data to and from these cloud-based infrastructures, easing the choice of platform. Organizations and individuals are far more comfortable with the concept of moving data into the cloud. While these two factors as well as others won't ensure success of cloud computing and storage models, they certainly will help

Cloud Computing Journal: What are the three main factors driving companies toward the Cloud?

Trainer: The driving factors can depend on industry and technical requirements and so may vary from company to company. That said, we have seen three primary drivers: flexibility, price, and ease of use. Cloud computing offers extremely flexible computing and storage for organizations. Because hardware can be more fully utilized with reduced or zero overhead, the costs for operating in this environment can be compelling. Finally cloud infrastructures have become more straightforward to utilize, making it easier for more organizations to take advantage of them.

Cloud Computing Journal: And what are the three main barriers preventing some companies from moving some of the on-premise computing to the Cloud?

Trainer: Again the barriers will differ from industry and use case but three we see are the requirement to rewrite applications due to storage requirements, the overall cost of storage, and the skills developed in the on-premise data center are not easily transferable to the cloud. New cloud-based information management skill sets must be learned and put into practice.

Cloud Computing Journal: How does your own company's offering/s assist CIOs and organizations/companies?

Trainer: Gluster offers a better way to do storage in the Cloud. We offer cloud-based NAS storage that is flexible, scalable and delivers consistent performance. Delivering cloud-based file storage means that many applications don't have to be re-written to run in the cloud, accelerating cloud adoption. In addition, by providing consistent performance, organizations can meet strict performance requirements and service level agreements (SLAs) they might have for their applications and their clients/customers.

Cloud Computing Journal: Are there other players in the Cloud ecosystem offering the same - or is your company unique? Why?

Trainer: We are unique in that we are the only high-availability and high-performance cloud storage available for the public cloud. We do not require an applications rewrite in order to use Gluster cloud storage, whether public or private cloud. In addition, we can tie together both public and private clouds within one global namespace and enable enterprises to leverage the best of both public and private cloud network attached storage (NAS) technology. Being able to deploy high performance NAS in the cloud has broken down performance and SLA barriers to adoption of the cloud for many Gluster customers and enabled new business models not previously possible with prior cloud storage technology.

Cloud Computing Journal: In the future what do you see as being the next "conquests" by virtualization and/or cloud computing? Are there any unclimbed heights yet in the enterprise? Is for example the convergence of telecoms and the cloud the Next Big Thing, or...?

Trainer: Real hybrid clouds, which allow you to federate and integrate on-premise and virtual computing and cloud storage models. Gluster's continued cloud storage innovation will go hand-in-hand with the Next Big Thing in cloud federation and integration.