STAMFORD, USA: As cloud computing begins to move beyond the pure hype stage and into the beginning of mainstream adoption, Gartner, Inc. has identified the five attributes of cloud computing.

By using these attributes, it is possible to see how strongly a cloud solution (or service) adheres to the cloud computing model.

Gartner defines cloud computing as a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to external customers using Internet technologies. This is a slight revision of Gartner's original definition published in 2008.

Gartner has removed "massively scalable" and replaced it with "scalable and elastic" as an indicator that the important characteristic of scale is the ability to scale up and down, not just to massive size.

Daryl Plummer, managing vice president, chief Gartner Fellow, said: "When approaching cloud computing, providers of cloud services and potential consumers of cloud services must examine the attributes of cloud computing to determine whether their services will deliver the expected outcomes."

"If a service is not scalable and elastic, then it may not be shareable enough. If it is not metered by use, then it may not allow for flexible pricing. Support for more of the attributes opens the door to a great value proposition to the consumer, and greater flexibility and potential cost reduction for the provider," he added.

David Mitchell Smith, vice president and Gartner Fellow, said: "We recognize that services may adhere to some attributes more effectively than others. The degree to which the service exhibits all these characteristics indicates how much it adheres to the cloud computing model. One must examine a combination of these attributes to evaluate cloud services. Focusing on one attribute in isolation is not recommended."

The five attributes of cloud computing are:
Service-Based: Consumer concerns are abstracted from provider concerns through service interfaces that are well-defined. The interfaces hide the implementation details and enable a completely automated response by the provider of the service to the consumer of the service.

The service could be considered "ready to use" or "off the shelf" because the service is designed to serve the specific needs of a set of consumers, and the technologies are tailored to that need rather than the service being tailored to how the technology works.