What is Cloud Computing?

D1stant

I would like to know. To me its just the latest bull**** term and its pretty hillarious how politicians with no clue are now quoting it as the future... a bit like the green economy of 2 years ago

To me (and quoting from another post)

30 years ago dumb terminals with centralised processing and storage were common. Was that cloud computing?

10 years ago ASPs started to be setup with centralised storage and application delivery. Was that cloud computing?

Is there anything new with this?

Naikon

It's a bulls4it term used to perpetuate the idea that external service providers should have complete and unlimited control over your data and computing resources. Essentially, you sign away the control over your own computer along with your right to privacy for convenience.

Jim2007

D1stant wrote: »

Is there anything new with this?

Well having spent 20+ years in the industry, I would say yes, especially for smaller companies as it allows them to buy computing power in the same way as they would water or electricity - they pay for what they use, they don't have to own the power station.

For example, if you consider someone like a show or conference promoter, normally they can get by using say a small LAN, but every so often they need to handle ticket sales on line and so on. Using Cloud Computing, they could locate the application with a service provider and simply pay him for the usage of his infrastructure during the period they need it - in addition he handles scalability. The result is that the promoter does not have to invest in infrastructure that for most of the time is just sitting idle.

So it should enable small companies to provide services that are on a par with those offered by larger companies, but without the high cost of entry.

Naikon wrote: »

It's a bulls4it term used to perpetuate the idea that external service providers should have complete and unlimited control over your data and computing resources. Essentially, you sign away the control over your own computer along with your right to privacy for convenience.

Don't confuse the offerings of individual service providers, with the tools and techniques of Cloud Computing, there are many companies, my own employer included, that will be using these techniques to run their own computing operations.

One of the major advantages for our employees is that they can work from where ever they choose - home, a cafe, on the train or where ever. In fact we are reducing our office capacity by 40% on the assumption that people will not want to be in the office!

Put this really is a topic for a tech forum.

Jim

LoanShark

So,it's fair to say that 'Cloud Computing' is the tool hire of the computing world....

Naikon

Jim2007 wrote: »

Don't confuse the offerings of individual service providers, with the tools and techniques of Cloud Computing, there are many companies, my own employer included, that will be using these techniques to run their own computing operations.

One of the major advantages for our employees is that they can work from where ever they choose - home, a cafe, on the train or where ever. In fact we are reducing our office capacity by 40% on the assumption that people will not want to be in the office!

Put this really is a topic for a tech forum.

Jim

I am speaking in general terms. None of the above is in any way innovative or special. The protocol specifications along with their respective implementations underpinning the "cloud" have existed for well over 20 years. Seriously, look up the RFC's. It's all there.

Eoin

Nothing to do with work/jobs - moved to Servers & Systems

trad

It's a bit like a tracker mortgage

Boskonay

There are lots of 'layers' to the cloud

IAAS - Infrastructure (as a service)
PAAS - platform
SAAS - Software

Some are newer than others, but as a general bundle, it 'levels the playing field' giving high end resources and tools to business that otherwise could not afford them, or afford the reliability / flexibility offered.

It's just a natural evolution of IT services and a replacement for servers at the back of the office.

There's too much hype about it imho, but the benefits are real, and lots of business are quietly taking advantage.

LoanShark

It sounds to be a bit up in the air to me..

Boskonay

LOL, or cloudy?

It's simple and 'common sensical' when you dig into it... just the hype and spoof you read / hear about doesn't help what is actually a great new way of delivering kit and services.

I would describe cloud (IAAS) as the 'box shifting' of the internet age

BaconZombie

There's planned downtime every night when we turn on the Roomba and it runs over the cord.

bluecatmorgana

I am a complete newbie so be gentle. Is cloud computing instead of having servers all the files are kept nowhere physical but on the internet?

If so what are the benefits apart from not needing servers?

Out of curiousity when I send myself an email using google mail and I can access it anywhere is that because somewhere in california theres a server with all my emails that I save on it?

D1stant

Boskonay wrote: »

There's too much hype about it imho, but the benefits are real, and lots of business are quietly taking advantage.

Any links?

It just seems like new packaging to me. The ASP stuff had a lot of hype also but the timing was terrible with the dotcom crash

But if providers are really able to deliver applications, storage, high speed ad-hoc VPNs, CDNetcc with a good SLA in an efficient way I would see the value.
I'd also be really surprised that any big carrier is pulling this off. A lot of them like to talk to the topic but in reality it gives them all they can do to deliver reasonable bit-pipe broadband

Boskonay

At the moment, the big carriers and traditional infra guys aren't really getting it right.

Which is why cloud is dominated by 'startups' and book stores !

I work with http://www.dediserve.com (apols for self promo) who offer simple, easy, cheap IAAS.

It's one of lots of such providers starting to emerge at every layer of the cloud, with google apps, microsoft BPOS, etc, moving ahead in the SAAS arena.

'Cloud' is inevitable. What is means is still debatable

Jim2007

Naikon wrote: »

I am speaking in general terms. None of the above is in any way innovative or special. The protocol specifications along with their respective implementations underpinning the "cloud" have existed for well over 20 years. Seriously, look up the RFC's. It's all there.

I was responding to your statement:

"It's a bulls4it term used to perpetuate the idea that external service providers should have complete and unlimited control over your data and computing resources. Essentially, you sign away the control over your own computer along with your right to privacy for convenience."

Which has nothing to do with the RFCs that your are referring to.... furthermore, there are a lot of steps in between an RFC and the technology begin coming widely available.

Jim.

D1stant

Jim2007 wrote: »

Which has nothing to do with the RFCs that your are referring to.... furthermore, there are a lot of steps in between an RFC and the technology begin coming widely available.

Jim.

True. Given that a lot of the RFCs are 10+ years old clearly

In any event this is about bundling in clever ways, so it more Sales & Marketing innovation than.. erm innovation

So thats now. But I agree also that the 'Cloud is inevitable' and I think its an interesting conversation as to what that could mean in terms of disposable smartphones, mobility and centralised data in the next few years. Aaargh but that be another thread

Eoin

bluecatmorgana wrote: »

I am a complete newbie so be gentle. Is cloud computing instead of having servers all the files are kept nowhere physical but on the internet?

If so what are the benefits apart from not needing servers?

Well, that could be a big advantage in itself. Another one is the ability to have computing power on demand. If a company needs extra servers for whatever reason, they can start a server that's in the cloud, and shut it down when it's not used - and they only pay for the time that the server is running.

Well, that's how Amazon's EC2 service works anyway.

bluecatmorgana wrote: »

Out of curiousity when I send myself an email using google mail and I can access it anywhere is that because somewhere in california theres a server with all my emails that I save on it?

Correct - though that in itself isn't necessarily "cloud computing".

Boskonay

One of the key benefits of 'proper' cloud IAAS is that you get all the benefits of a high end physical installation with high availability, failover, SAN storage, redundant network - for a tiny, fractional price!

BaconZombie

I've tried CloudSigma 7-day free trail and it's very good to firing up a quick client since they have LOTS of pre-make images including BackTrack 5 !!!

http://www.cloudsigma.com/

Boskonay

Interesting, based in Switzerland - hadn't come across them before - i see they only do local storage, so a server failure can still take you down

Sposs

If anyone is looking for a free trial on the <temp snip pending PM response> platform to play with drop me a pm.

rolion

For me,beside the financial push of the ISPs to move 'moneys' , servers, users, applications and make you dependant on them...is like having a Ferrari 2012' model driving it on Ireland' motorways of 8M or 12M speeds limit !!! And,on a single lane...

Please,please correct me if i'm wrong...

Boskonay

What do you mean about the road analogy? That irish broadband is too poor?

Jim2007

Boskonay wrote: »

One of the key benefits of 'proper' cloud IAAS is that you get all the benefits of a high end physical installation with high availability, failover, SAN storage, redundant network - for a tiny, fractional price!

Which in turn should give Irish SMEs a chance to compete with the big boys in their particular industry and thus create some badly needed jobs.

Jim.

rolion

Boskonay wrote: »

What do you mean about the road analogy? That irish broadband is too poor?

What kind on broadband infrastructure we have in place in Ireland !?

I have customers using less then 8M/1M,other single one at 100M.
Common factor across industry is 8M.

ednwireland

the cloud is finde untill it falls over ask a certain here in company mentioned here about a denial of service attack, not as amorphous as they try and make out, as far as i can tell its still hosting companies offering you vitual server space in specific locations, no realtime mirroring, no spreading of services of a virtual bank of servers in numerous locations

(you can do this but its v expensive)

honestly i cant see any diffference between alleged cloud services at the moment and hosted computing of a few years ago

Boskonay

What cloud offers offer 'legacy hosting' is the flexibility, scalability and feature set.

You can crank up ram, cpu, storage on demand, you can failover from problems automatically to new servers. Your hosting sits on a grid of SAN and compute nodes, rather than a single point solution, allowing you to scale to 32GB of ram today and back to 1GB of ram tomorrow. Things that simply are not possible in legacy hosting.

DDOS are a feature of 'life' on the web, nothing special to the cloud in that regard.

The mistake people make is thinking the cloud is somehow amorphous, or 'magical' and that you can stop worrying about security, scalability or responsibility. All cloud IAAS delivers is a vastly reduced reaction time, much more power and control and flexibility - but it's still a box in a datacentre at the end of the day.

Boskonay

The only way to understand the difference is try it out...

D1stant

Boskonay wrote: »

The mistake people make is thinking the cloud is somehow amorphous, or 'magical' and that you can stop worrying about security, scalability or responsibility.

Maybe theres a curious flipside to that too. A chap (yes unconfirmed and I cant find a link) was telling me the other day that a guy rented E2C resource to crack a Wifi network and it took 6 minutes at 32 cent oer minute (approx) - which was a lot less than the 10E asked for by the Wifi SP

Perhaps the cloud in the wrong hands enables all kinds of malicious things. If you thought DDOS was bad just you wait for CDOS !

pjmn

There you go....

Naikon

Jim2007 wrote: »

I was responding to your statement:

"It's a bulls4it term used to perpetuate the idea that external service providers should have complete and unlimited control over your data and computing resources. Essentially, you sign away the control over your own computer along with your right to privacy for convenience."

Which has nothing to do with the RFCs that your are referring to.... furthermore, there are a lot of steps in between an RFC and the technology begin coming widely available.

Jim.

Seriously though, it's an ambiguous term. I did not refer to any individual RFC btw.