Selecting a Service Platform - The Practice of Cloud System Administration - page 59

Standardized Shipping Containers
A common way for industries to dramatically improve processes is to standardize
theirdeliverymechanism.Theintroductionofstandardizedshippingcontainersre-
volutionized the freight industry.
Previously individual items were loaded and unloaded from ships, usually by
hand. Each item was a different size and shape, so each had to be handled differ-
ently.
Standardized shipping containers resulted in an entirely different way to ship
products. Because each shipping container was the same shape and size, loading
and unloading could be done much faster. A single container might hold many in-
dividual items, but since they were transported as a group, transferring the items
between modes of transport was quick work. Customs could approve all the items
in a particular container and seal it, eliminating the need for customs checks at re-
maining hops on the container's journey as long as the seal remained unbroken.
As other modes of transportation adopted the standard shipping container, the
conceptofintermodalshippingwasborn.Acontainerwouldbeloadedatafactory
and remain as a unit whether it was on a truck, train, or ship.
All of this started in April 1956, when Malcom McLean's company SeaLand
organized the first shipment using standardized containers from New Jersey
(where Tom lives) to Texas. ( Levinson 2008 ) .
3.3 Level of Resource Sharing
In a “public cloud,” a third party owns the infrastructure and uses it to provide service for
many customers. The sharing may be fine-grained, mixing processing and data of different
customers on the same machine. Alternatively, the sharing may be more segmented, like
tenants in an apartment building with well-defined partitions between them. In a “private
cloud,” a company runs its own computing infrastructure on its own premises. This infra-
structure may be set up for a dedicated internal project or, more commonly, done as an in-
ternalserviceproviderthatmakestheofferingavailable toprojectsanddepartments within
the company. Hybrids may also be created, such as private clouds run in rented datacenter
space.
The choice between private or public use of a platform is a business decision based on
four factors: compliance, privacy, cost, and control.