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I L T A N E T . O R G
applications (the virtualization hypervisor). Furthermore, this
different analogy highlights key reasons why firms consider
moving servers and applications to cloud platforms.
In an IaaS platform, firms desire to keep control over their
virtual servers and applications, perhaps even building their
own applications to meet their specific needs. That said, they
do not want to manage the technology plumbing – the physical
servers, storage, networking, etc. With pizza, this is the same as
making your favorite pizza with all of your premium ingredients,
homemade sauce, and all the toppings you want but then bringing
it to a pizza place to use their coal-fired oven for the most authentic
taste. You did not want to buy and maintain that coal-fired oven
yourself but rather leverage it when needed to give you the best
possible results for your pizza. This alternate analogy also
includes a key aspect of cloud services that is absent from the
original one – consumption. In a SaaS model, an end user must
only consume whatever service or application is presented. The
firm is responsible for payment, but the end user is who consumes
the service. In the original pizza analogy, there was no indication
of anything that the end user would do. In the alternate analogy,
eating the pizza (truly consumption) is the only responsibility
assigned to the end user.
Regardless of the analogy used, comparing cloud platforms
to pizza can be an entertaining and effective way to explain the key
differences between those platforms and make you hungry at the
same time. ILTA
Joe Hoegler is the Chief Technology Innovation Officer
in the New York office of Kraft Kennedy and Practice
Group Leader of the firm's Infrastructure and Enterprise
Systems Practice Group. Joe provides technical
leadership and strategic guidance on client engagements
involving a broad range of law firm technologies and
is responsible for directing technology strategy and
providing technical management at the firm.