Cloud Computing

[siliconphreak]

For those of you interested in Cloud Computer. As in a virtual computer or desktop environment that runs on the internet and isn't exclusive to your own computer but which ever you have access to that has internet access. A co-worker showed me this the other day. Figured a few of you geeks out there would probably like the idea of this.

http://g.ho.st/

[Casual_Shooter]

I see everyone using cloud computing in the future. I don't think having software on your computer will be "normal".

[bigmike82]

As a network admin, I abhor the idea of 'cloud' computing. The lack of control over your information is, IMO, utterly unacceptable.

From an academic/distributed processing viewpoint, it's an outstanding tool.

[sfwdiy]

As a network admin, I abhor the idea of 'cloud' computing. The lack of control over your information is, IMO, utterly unacceptable.

From an academic/distributed processing viewpoint, it's an outstanding tool.

+1 I think cloud computing has it's advantages and disadvantages. I use some cloud based infrastructure for my domain through Google Apps, mainly the mail. I still download all my mail with a mail client, though. I've noticed that most people who strictly use webmail tend to have only one email address. That's not me.

The biggest obstacle to legitimate cloud computing is still bandwidth. Imagine editing video in the cloud.

--B

[artherd]

The first person who ties encryption and cloud computing together is going to be very wealthy.

[SwissFluCase]

The first person who ties encryption and cloud computing together is going to be very wealthy.

If everything is in the cloud, a la Terminal Server or diskless workstation, who holds the keys?

I expect most clouds to be "private clouds" with the entity that owns the information owning the cloud. That said, hosting specific apps, such as Salesforce.com in the cloud, is most likely the future of the technology. "Infrastructure Cloud Computing" was the paradigm in the mainframe days.

Regards,


SwissFluCase

[WeekendWarrior]

I work for one of the premier vendors of cloud computing applications and development platforms. Companies throughout the world are realizing that cloud computing will not only save them money by not having to invest in infrastructure and an related maintenance/IT resources, but the cloud allows for speedy development and implementation times for applications as well as simplified disaster recovery. Some common free cloud computing examples to throw out there would be E-bay, Facebook, Amazon.com, LinkedIn, Google Apps, etc. etc. These are not just websites, they are applications your are accessing through the internet. Many vendors are moving towards the SaaS model (Software as a Service). Our company has seen consistent strong growth for 10 years, even during the downturn in the economy.

Cloud computing is the perfect solution for small businesses that cannot afford to invest in infrastructure or application maintenance. It is also widely accepted at the Enterprise level.

Regarding data ownership and encryption, our system meets all of the internet security standards such as Sys Trust Sas-70 type 2 compliance, ISO 27001 compliance. Regarding your data, at my company, you own your data and we will not access it unless you give us permission to do so. All of your data can be exported into .csv files so if you ever leave our company's service, you can bring your data with you. I don't know about other companies out there, but your data is safe with us, and you are the sole owner of said data.

[Librarian]

WeekendWarrior (or anyone else), can you point me to a decent user-level discussion of cloud computing? As the sales guys always want to hear, "I want to know more".

[vta]

I'd like to see how each of you define the phrase 'cloud computing'. Here are some of my explanation of the concept of cloud computing:

Cloud computing is basically an all emcompassing phrase that describes storing, accessing and manipulating data that is stored on a server (physical or virtual) in the Internet. There are a few aspects of it as follows.

End Users:
Anything you do inside your browser is technically computing in the cloud. From personal email services like GMail to enterprise web apps like SalesForce, they are all 'cloud-based'

Sys. Admins:
Running virtual machines as servers instead of running hardware in your server room is another definition of cloud computing. It consolidates the computing resource by running virtual OSs that are less dependent on single pieces of hardware to prevent failures

Thin Clients:
This hearkens back to the days of the mainframe but it is most prevalent today in the mobile environment. The ever-so-popular iPhone is a perfect example of what today's thin client looks like and it excels in being the interface to today's cloud-based services. That's not to say that your laptop or desktop computer isn't a thin client as some of today's light weight mobile machines are starting to blur that line.

I think the idea of using a thin client that looks like a monitor/keyboard/mouse at the home is kind of a dated concept. We all have our data stored in the cloud already being registered members of Calguns. Whether or not you will one day rely solely on the data stored in the cloud and no where else is probably the biggest obstacle it will need to overcome for it to become a computing standard.

[artherd]

Everything old is new again

If all data in the cloud is encrypted - it is irrelevant who holds the keys. The trick is - making that work, since generally things need to be decrypted to process in any rational way.

At least today.

If everything is in the cloud, a la Terminal Server or diskless workstation, who holds the keys?

I expect most clouds to be "private clouds" with the entity that owns the information owning the cloud. That said, hosting specific apps, such as Salesforce.com in the cloud, is most likely the future of the technology. "Infrastructure Cloud Computing" was the paradigm in the mainframe days.

Regards,


SwissFluCase

[artherd]

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=30401.30404

[wildhawker]

Everything old is new again

If all data in the cloud is encrypted - it is irrelevant who holds the keys. The trick is - making that work, since generally things need to be decrypted to process in any rational way.

At least today.

Are you pointing towards quantum computing and cryptology?

[artherd]

Are you pointing towards quantum computing and cryptology?

Have been for most of my life

[jmlivingston]

The terms "Cloud Computing" and "Software as a Service" are just new names to generate buzz around what we all used to know as Application Service Providers.

The collection of technologies that fulfill this vague concept of cloud-computing are in many ways extensions of what we've already been doing. VMWare providing an ability to allocate CPU/RAM resources on the fly, SAN-based systems for storage on the fly, and load-balancing (preferrably global but even local) for high availability, these are really the foundations of the cloud.

The good question is this: Who owns the cloud? I don't believe it needs to be an outside entity of your own IT department. About 6 years ago a former employer of mine approached our core IT apps this way. Everything was built with the motto of "Always available, anytime and anyplace". We became so successful at it that our CIO & management was even considering selling access to our platform to some of our smaller competitors. The software was highly customized, nobody offered anything comparable to what we built, and it was a kick-butt solution. Our entire approach to everything was that we should be seen as a service to everyone else in the company.

What I guess I'm saying is that cloud-computing can be as much an approach to your own architecture and design as it is to simply forking $$$ over to some fancy re-branded ASP.

Everything old is new again

If all data in the cloud is encrypted - it is irrelevant who holds the keys. The trick is - making that work, since generally things need to be decrypted to process in any rational way.

At least today.

One of the BIG keys to this is encrypted storage, I just happen to work for a company that's involved in this space.

[lazyworm]

Cloud computing, virtualization, SaaS, etc are just buzz words that marketing
teams everywhere grab hold of.

Almost every company that has a web based application is calling themselves
a cloud vendor nowadays.

There is also the debate of public vs private cloud.

I'd suggest we all look pass these definitions and buzz words.

To me, cloud computing is the next step is commoditizing computing
resources, turning all of them into utilities like electricity or phone
service. Either as an application with a specific purpose -- business
app, email, whatever; or as raw computing power -- Amazon AWS, vmware.
You as a company or a consumer, pay for what you use. You don't need
to worry about how's it built or how it's maintained. You just use it.

This is the same natural progression of a lot of technology. You don't need
your own generator to have electricity, you get it from PG&E. You don't
need to setup modem to everybody you need to communicate with (e.g.
uucp), you just get an ISP. You don't need to run your own email server,
you just used Gmail, yahoo, hotmail etc. You don't need to go out and
source a server, you just allocate or spawn one.

Also to point out... this is just another alternative among all the choices.
A company's needs will drive it towards the cloud or a more traditional
solution (e.g. colo, hosted servers, shrinked-wrapped biz apps, privacy)

On a more personal note, my day job uses Amazon AWS extensively.
We're running a very successful business off AWS. As the IT/Ops guy,
commodity computing allows me to closely and easily manage computing
resources. I don't need to (mostly because I can't) plan ahead on our
server needs. I just need a 15-30 min notice so I can fire up more servers.
I can also turn them off as soon as the need is gone. This is a finer grain
control that hosting or colo can't provide.