Battle of the Clouds
on June 9th, 2011 at 7:04 pmThe general idea of Cloud computing can be traced back to the 1960s, it was in 1961 that John McCarthy gave a speech to celebrate MIT’s centennial. In this he suggested the idea of a computer or information utility which could sell computing power or storage space ( and applications ) in the same way that current utilities sell electricity or gas.
Is your head in the clouds ?
Although the idea faded away a bit in the 70s, apart from research groups, it started to emerge from the mist around 2000 with varying degrees of success. For most of 2000 these were really limited to business users then in August 2006 Google Apps came along and created quite a buzz, in the same month Amazon released its public Beta version called EC2 ( Elastic Compute Cloud ). In October 2008 MicroSoft threw its hat into the ring with its announcement of the Windows Azure Platform. Finally, in the last week or so, Apple announced its cloud service called iCloud, on a side line I would love a job at Apple naming their products as it has to be so easy … Apart from, possibly, the body designers at Porsche
So what is ‘Cloud Computing’ then ?
Actually services do vary but I like to think of what it will become ( remember we are talking about something that has not been around all that long ), so my vision is that all your device needs is an internet connection and a web browser. What you are using your device for ( mobile phone, computer, laptop, TV etc. ) is to access the servers through the internet, it is these that hold your data and run the applications. This would mean an end to syncing all you devices, upgrading versions of your software and having to pay for a device with a high power CPU / Memory / Motherboard which you actually only use to its maximum for a tiny fraction of the time.
The iCloud is slightly different from most in that it is more aimed at just syncing your data across various devices rather than offering a full cloud computing experience.
There are two main criticisms that are raised when it comes to Cloud Computing. The major problem is that you do need an internet connection, if you have no internet access you can not get to your data and the programs. On the face of it this is a fair point and I can understand why people cite it as a major problem. However do remember that it is still in its embryonic form and, in some ways, so is the internet. If I look back 10 years it is amazing how things have changed in that short time. In 2001 I was running a hosting business and would have regular trips abroad, sometimes having to rely on a laptop hooked up to a Nokia 7110 giving a max speed of 9.6kbps … Or no connection at all. Even at home, in the Lake District, I was working off a 56.6kbps connection. One habit I got into from then was to carry a notepad and pen ( ask your parents about them
), it is something I still do to this day. Although getting disconnected can be a real problem in business it also actually helped as it gave me ‘time off’ to just sit down and write ideas. Somehow the same people that complain about this ignore the ‘down time’ of their servers / phones / cars / people etc. It is early days and the internet connectivity is only going to get better.The second point is security, especially given the number of recent and very public attacks by crackers …. Mind you, did you notice that they only got Bin Laden after the Sony PlayStation network went down ?
Ironically rumours have surfaced that the attack on the PlayStation Network were actually launched by crackers using Amazons EC2 platform.
Security is obviously a major consideration when it comes to using the ‘Cloud’, but given how much of a lot of companies data is currently routed through the internet anyway I don’t see it as a major problem … As long as you are careful who you partner with.
The Cloud is here to stay and will start playing more and more of a roll in our computing lives, just remember that it is still relatively early days.
Open Source … See, you thought you could get through one of my postings about tech without me mentioning it If you have read my ramblings you will know I’m an Open Source advocate. So how about the Cloud then ? Well Eucalyptus is probably the most popular at the moment even though it is really just designed for on-premises infrastructure. One of the problems holding back a serious contender for this area is that you have to have a lot of developers agree on a standard. In the ‘Closed Source’ world it is relatively easy as you are just producing your own code that is hidden from all and you are the only one to work on it. I’ll leave it at that as this is starting to get a bit long for just a blog post and the beer is calling