There's no obligation for a WAN to use dedicated circuits... 50% of the WANs of organizations that I've been associated with have used VPNs for connectivity.
"Cloud" is definitely a very ambiguous term, and heavily co-opted by marketing, but I like the NIST definition, a summary of which can be found below: Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand > network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., > networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly > provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider > interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of > five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment > models. http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/drafts/800-145/Draft-SP-800-145_cloud-definition.pdf (Section 2) People are referring to everything from basic web serving to hosted application providing and standard virtualization as "cloud", which I disagree with. * * *ASB* *http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker* *Harnessing the Advantages of Technology for the SMB market… * On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 9:45 AM, Ben Scott <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 12:16 AM, Brian Desmond <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> I'm not talking private WAN, I'm talking VPN. Using the public Internet > to carry > >> a secure tunnel for a private payload. > > > > That's basically private WAN... > > We're splitting hairs now, but hey, this is the Internet, that's > what we do. :-) > > To my thinking, a "private WAN" is a "private (wide area) network", > while a "VPN" is a "virtual private network". The one uses dedicated > circuits, the other does not; hence "virtual". :) > > Going back to the original question of "cloud or not?": We have two > scenarios: > > (1) You're running an application on one of your systems which > communicates with an undefined number of servers hosted by a > third-party off-site. Communication is carried over the public > Internet. Communication is secured by having your system encrypt the > traffic into a secure tunnel using SSL. > > (2) You're running an application on one of your systems which > communicates with an undefined number of servers hosted by a > third-party off-site. Communication is carried over the public > Internet. Communication is secured by using a separate appliance > which encrypts the traffic into a secure tunnel using SSL. > > As I understand it, you're saying the first is "cloud", but the > second is not? :) > > -- Ben > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
