False Cloud, Cloudwashing and Dishwashing

I used to be a dish-washer for a restaurant when I was a lot younger. The value of my service was easily quantified - either the plates and pans are clean and the chef always has a good supply, or not and you get torrents of abuse and ladles thrown at you. Ahh, those were the days.

Unfortunately when it comes to Cloud, and specifically cloud-washing, the lack of value in a service is not as obvious. A definition (there are a few) is as follows:

"Cloud washing... is the purposeful and sometimes deceptive attempt by a vendor to rebrand an old product or service by associating the buzzword "cloud" with it"

It also equates to Mark Benioff's 'False Cloud' line, and is important when it comes to judging whether a service does offer the benefits of the cloud model (which have been well documented so not covered here).

The motivation for writing this post was a recent article I read which seems to me either to be a blatant attempt at cloud-washing, or just a demonstration of misunderstanding. This frustrates me because 'cloud' is not a new concept any more and NIST have provided a widely accepted standard definition. Please, have a quick read:

Article charged with Cloud-washing: Case Study: Making Cloud ROI a Reality
Cloud-washing indicators: "Outsourcing made the most sense." "install new off-site servers", "leases physical servers"

What they really mean: Outsourcing and virtualization


It is pretty easy to take the essential characteristics of cloud outlined in the NIST summary and make a judgement against any offering as to whether it it 'true cloud'. So in this instance does the article fit the cloud definition at all? Here goes:

On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.

No: No indication of putting provisioning in the hands of the consumer


Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations).

Yes: The capabilities are available over a network


Resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand.

No: This is normally the easiest was of judging whether a service is 'Cloud' or not - simply outsourcing does not give you the economies of scale associated with a multi tenant architecture


Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand.

No: No indication that the consumer can scale up and down rapidly. The fact 'leasing physical servers' is mentioned suggests this would not be as easy to scale as a proper IaaS platform such as AWS.


Measured service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability1 at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts).

Yes: The virtualization element here and moving from 50+ servers to 4 suggests this is true


So, I come to the conclusion that although the term 'cloud' is mentioned 17 times in the article, what they really mean is outsourcing and virtualization. Not Cloud. So please, anyone who starts an article on 'cloud', have a quick look at the NIST definition so we are all on the same page. Otherwise I will throw a ladle at you.


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