When people talk about running applications in the cloud, the computing infrastructure is often treated as a black box. Data goes in, data comes out, and many don’t even consider if the service instance is running their workload as efficiently or securely as possible.
This shouldn’t be the case. The infrastructure that powers a cloud service can make a huge difference in the performance, reliability, and security of applications as they run in the cloud. And that’s why we need more transparency.
When Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) expose the technology and capabilities inside a cloud service, the consumers of cloud services can make better, more informed decisions. With a view into the performance and security features of the hardware infrastructure, cloud consumers are positioned to match a cloud instance specifically to the needs of the workload.
At Intel, we are working with the cloud service provider ecosystem to enable cloud transparency. That’s the case with the Powered by Intel® Cloud Technology program, which provides information on the underlying infrastructure behind a cloud instance. Launched early this year, the program already has 40 participants—including such prominent cloud service providers as Amazon Web Services, CenturyLink, IBM SoftLayer, Rackspace and Virtustream.
There’s good reason for this shift to transparency, and it’s a pretty simple one at that. When the consumers of cloud services have a view of the underlying computing infrastructure, they can get a lot more bang for their cloud buck.
Raejeanne Skillern is Intel’s director of marketing for cloud computing.

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