Join the "Cloud," why don't you?

[dd74]

So the term is "cloud computing." In short, many apps we use today will be web based. That means we will virtually have little to no software on our computers, and all our storage of docs, photos, video, will be on the web.

Soon, we may not even need operating systems nearly as power-hungry as what we have now, and many computers will become simply network computers for connecting to the internet, and little else -- maybe except a paperweight.

So, are you ready for such a change in your computer lifestyle?

Microsoft is already forcing their hand: their next Office iteration - Office 2010 - will be web based.

Kinda' cool, kinda weird.

[HHI944]

The new Apple OS requires 1/2 the diskspace of Leopard. I imagine that cloud computing plays a part in pulling that off.

[cstreit]

I think you'll see a hybrid.

We use a lot of node based, or "grid" computing in the software company I work for. Cool part is, each node is "self aware" and if it goes down, the other nodes pick up the work that the failed node was doing and soldier on. That is one thing that web based J2EE or .not apps suck at... Sure they have good transactional recovery but for long running algorithmic or mathematical processes it sucks.

Enter in the backswing. Back in the early to mid 90's everyone was touting their web interfaces for enterprise architectures. If you didn't have it, or at least were demoing it, you were dead. SO everyone went out and rearchitected. Then the industry realized a few things:

1. Fault tolerance for non-transactional architectures was nearly impossible (which is why we perfected the J2EE grid architecture (proprietary)
2. Web interfaces often took 5-6 clicks for somethinga fat client could do with one drag and drop.

So... Microsoft WMF and some other standards providing a "rich" client (not ugly java ones) with mashups to public apps are starting to see popularity. We've built thick clients for nearly all of our core apps. THese WILL require computing power at the desktop. It just becomes an extension of the overall system.

I also own a small software company and we push some work to the client that ultimately just doesn't require back-communication with the servers, saves us CPU power and cost!

[JavaBrewer]

That's all great until my ISP goes down... what then... no word processing...?

Lots of potential goodness comes with SOA as long as the architecture makes sense. You don't want mission critical processes dependent on the pipe - meaning some form of local processing needs to remain on the client in order for folks to do their job should the pipe get stepped on.

[cl8ton]

Cloud computing is the way of the future.
Just be sure to strong password protect everything, unlike Twitter did this summer!

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/twitters-internal-strategy-laid-bare-to-be-the-pulse-of-the-planet/

Just hope P'Diddy doesn't bust a cap over this

[WilsonTC]

Will I still be able to run my Tandy 5000?

[HardDrive]

I'm sure we can all rest easy that private companies will never turn our private information over to the federal government without the due process of law.....

....uh oh....

[dd74]

Originally Posted by HardDrive

I'm sure we can all rest easy that private companies will never turn our private information over to the federal government without the due process of law.....

....uh oh....

Google does that already, though not necessarily to the govt.

Google's new OS - Google Chrome - will be web based and most certainly will gather user information.

[legion]

Guys, hate to tell you this, but "cloud computing" is just the latest IT buzzword. It doesn't have an exact definition, which has allowed every vendor to search their product inventory and declare that some of their products use it (without modification!). In other words, ask 10 IT people what "cloud computing" means, and you're likely to get 11 definitions.

What I've seen discussed so far in this thread is just traditional client-server stuff or thin client (web based). This isn't new. I remember reading articles over ten years ago that declared central web servers would be doing all of our word processing, spreadsheets, etc. in the near future. For a variety of reasons (like loss of control), it never happened.

[beepbeep]

+1 on legion.

I'm in the industry. Most bigger companies don't want to submit anything to somebody elses "cloud" except maybe e-mail. "Cloud" is nothing but a bunch of iron in server-room, but serviced by somebody else.

Big companies have their own "clouds" in shape of SQL and VMWare clusters.

While this might be somewhat usable for Joe 6-Pack (mail, basic Word-processing etc.), moving heavier applications to cloud is big no-no.

And what happens when "cloud" breaks? It's a mess:

http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/03/23/online-backup-provider-loses-customers-data

[Super_Dave_D]

Have you seen Apples Mobile Me??

Without sounding like an Apple freak…..

They give you 40 gig of hard drive to store anything you want and you can manage security so you can share with others.

It has a gallery (personal web page) where you can share photos’ movies or whatever. Again security can be easily managed. You can even set it up so others can upload to the folder.

It ‘pushes’ calendar and contacts immediately so all computers and phones are in sync.

Personal email

And the coolest thing is that…………….

If I lose my iPhone / iPod it will tell me where it is. I can send a message to the phone and it will ring and display even if the phone is locked. If all fails, I can destroy the phone remotely James Bond style!!! Not really but it will kill the phone.

Times sure are changing.

Here is one of my gallery folders that I save Porsche posters. You can download the entire folder and it will zip it for you or individual pictures. Warning – some are 3-4 meg high rez pictures. Those print awesome!!!

http://gallery.me.com/daviddessoffy#100033&bgcolor=black&view=grid

[cl8ton]

You have the big 4 (Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Google) investing billions into cloud computing
along with the best minds in the industry working on it (namely Cutler of MS).

The masses will get a taste of CC when Google roles out their Chrome OS and WAVE soon.
Chrome OS is a lightweight OS whose sole job is to boot quickly and display a browser.
After that, your entirely on the NET, all apps, documents everything reside in the cloud.

Search for Microsoft Azure for a good explanation of CC. I have written for the
Azure platform and assure you as a developer; it really requires a complete shift in thinking how
applications should be written.

CC is still in its infancy to call it a fad just yet.

[legion]

Originally Posted by beepbeep

+1 on legion.

I'm in the industry. Most bigger companies don't want to submit anything to somebody elses "cloud" except maybe e-mail. "Cloud" is nothing but a bunch of iron in server-room, but serviced by somebody else.

Big companies have their own "clouds" in shape of SQL and VMWare clusters.

While this might be somewhat usable for Joe 6-Pack (mail, basic Word-processing etc.), moving heavier applications to cloud is big no-no.

And what happens when "cloud" breaks? It's a mess:

http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/03/23/online-backup-provider-loses-customers-data

It sounds like you work in a similar environment to me. They won't even let developers inside of the server rooms where I work for security reasons. There's no way we will ever offload our computing to someone else--the security risk is just too great.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

This concept used to be called the "dumb box" by Bill Gates in the 1990s and it was poorly received then.

Stuff that's important, I keep on a standalone PC with no network or internet connection. Yes, it's a PITA to transfer stuff onto it, but at least it's secure.

There will always be a market for local-based applications and OS-es, even if the web based ones are more convenient (and easier for the companies offering them to control/charge for, which is really the point here...)

[beepbeep]

If I could get a dollar each time a marketing guy comes with new buzzword, I would be a rich man by now

"Cloud"-environments have existed for a long time. But we didn't know that they were "clouds" so we called them "fail-tolerant clusters". That was run on the big iron. In last decade, x86 hardware got faster and storage got cheaper which allowed you to build clusters with run-off-the-mill components. VMWare greatly improved this so many companies are virtualizing their servers into big VMWare-clusters. (this is very much a step back to "dumb-terminal-to-mainframe" architecture of 40 years ago).

So essentially, nothing has changed. This has been around forever. Only difference is that Internet lines got faster and Web-browsers can now run processes internally. That will allow "outsourcing" of certain applications to be run remotely by home users on big clusters built on cheap Wintel hardware.

"Clouds" are already here, you just don't notice them. Your Google search is done in the "cloud", your bank account is handled by a cluster of computers...heck, I bet even this forum is probably hosted on couple of load-balanced servers an sucking it's data from clustered database servers.

A personal observation: Things are equally slow nowadays as they were 20 years ago. A web-based "thin" client needs as much or more time to render all that fluff, connect to the Interwebs, parse the HTML and deliver the data as old Telnet-terminal took 20 years ago.
So don't worry, you will still need to buy newest Wintel CPU with gazzilion GHz in order to run your spreadsheet or write a simple document. Otherwise the whole industry would grind to halt.

[cl8ton]

Cloud computing goes much further than just interconnected servers (VMWare/HyperV) in a datacenter.

It is essentially an OS of its own (search Hadoop) that has thousand/millions of servers both physical and virtual
spread over many locations (typically global)

Whats old is new again with a big twist.

Java has been around for a long time then came
along AJAX that is nothing more than Java used in a different way.

[carnutzzz]

Is SaaS a version of cloud?

[cl8ton]

Originally Posted by carnutzzz

Is SaaS a version of cloud?

It certainly can be, SalesForce .com is one that comes to mind although they are hosting
on a private probably proprietary cloud.

Integrating some software with SalesForce a while back was my first taste of how CC
forced you to think differently about data storage as there is no central SQL server to use.

I had to describe the data structures up front and then throw them at the cloud.

Access to the data was a little slower than traditional methods and a bit
clunky when describing what data I wanted to access "End Points".

[GH85Carrera]

I see more and more people using a "web-books" instead of notebooks. If all you are doing is email and a simple word processing or a spreadsheet it is adequate. There will always be real computers in manufacturing however.

Right now I am scanning a job that will take over 165 hours to scan. One computer running a scanner that costs as much as a decent house. There are almost 450 frames of film and each frame will be one gigabyte. Once all that is scanned and we do a lot of computer processing and data input it will take another computer several days to mosaic all the images together and then cut them into one square mile images. That type of thing will never be done on the cloud.

[Monza_dh]

I also work in the biz and what you will end up seeing is both private and public "Cloud" offerings. Private clouds built by manufacturers and service providers for larger companies to serve internal buisness units and public clouds, Amazon, google etc for smaller companies and mid tier service providers just repackaging and reselling it as a service as well.

You'll be seeing more and more of this on a daily weekly basis:

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/story/10592015/1/tech-giants-may-seek-piece-of-cloud.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA