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Multiple Experts Try Defining "Cloud Computing"
jg21 writes "Even though IBM's Irving Wladawsky Berger reports a leading analyst as having said recently that 'There is a clear consensus that there is no real consensus on what cloud computing is,' here are no fewer than twenty attempts at a definition of the infrastructural paradigm shift that is sweeping across the Enterprise IT world — some of them really quite good. From the article: 'Cloud computing is...the user-friendly version of grid computing.' (Trevor Doerksen) and 'Cloud computing really is accessing resources and services needed to perform functions with dynamically changing needs. An application or service developer requests access from the cloud rather than a specific endpoint or named resource.' (Kevin Hartig)"
... is mainly water vapor.
Ok, unless we speak about software, where is mainly vapor ware.
WTF is Software 10.0? I must have missed previous nine versions...
Is it like SETI or is it physical like a bladerack or all of this plus the humans making input requests. WE ARE THE BORG! RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!!
buzzword-compliant computing. I hate stories like this, which are really just cover for somebody's marketing.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Cloud computing is a privacy destroyer. That's my definition.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Many people would agree that Cloud Computing is a subset of Cloud Shoveling.
(from French Canadian "Pelleter des nuages").
It seems that its kind of clouded what cloud computing really means.
Gives Wired and other mags yet another buzzword topic to claim is newfangled and great when really it's just a new paint job on an idea that has been around for decades. But no, really, it's a paradigm shift, we SWEAAAR. Bleh.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
What is Cloud Computing - Video
Summary -
"At the Web 2.0 Expo, we asked Tim O'Reilly, Dan Farber, Matt Mullenweg, Jay Cross, Brian Solis, Kevin Marks, Steve Gillmor, Jeremy Tanner, Maggie Fox, Tom McGovern, Sam Lawrence, Stowe Boyd, David Tebbutt, Dave McClure, Chris Carfi, Vamshi Krishna and Rod Boothby the same question: "What is Cloud Computing?". Here's what we got. (more)"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PNuQHUiV3Q
It's obviously the latest Web 2.0 .NET technology-based user-driven blogging paradigm that gives the bloggosphere the synergy for cloud-based dynamic content platforms!
/business-mode
There are mountains to cross for those that are willing.
Shouldn't the title read 'Multiple experts try to define "Cloud Computing"'?
Joyent, the best web host I've ever used, recently wrote an extended piece attempting to define cloud computing. They introduced what they call a "CloudScore", and rated themselves as 7/9 on it. Interesting read.
Keep it away from the Silver Iodide
It's interesting that a fairly large number of these guys refer to the term itself as a buzz word.
I think cloud computing is less of a buzz word than most, but I really think that most of these definitions miss the biggest difference: With cloud computing you outsource *all* your hardware. So, any application where you are not physically talking about what software runs on which piece of hardware is cloud computing to me.
MP3 Search Engine
If cloud computing has bugs, it's Fart Computing.
Table-ized A.I.
i always thought cloud computing is what happens when a bunch of researchers score really good pot. "i bet we can get more funding if we call it a paradigm shift"
Never trust a man's definition of something when he tells you what it does rather than what it is.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
aint it ironic?
* Ostensibly, the dynamic upside of this new process innovation goes beyond the ubiquitous expansion of existing consolidation synergies for cloud computing consumers.
* It also represents a radical reduction in physical footprint, power consumption and management headaches, err challenges in replacing and disposing old servers in a constant cycle.
* This eco-friendly initiative is a solid platform to establish PR campaigns.
* It further maximizes up-time through cloud redundancy, and fewer hardware upgrade cycles. This enables departments to place a greater mind-share on customer service practices, establishing better inter-department goodwill.
* It is also an emerging paradigm shift from a foreign hardware market to an American services market of fat pipes, I mean growing telecommunications infrastructure and service based platforms.
* It allows corporations to eliminate the positions of smarmy sysadmins, those bastards that no one likes. Oh, wait. Shit.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Reminds me of the infrastructure diagrams of corporate LAN's and WAN's back in the 1990's. They would have a diagram of the local network of each site with servers, workstations, routers and firewalls. Then each firewall would be connected to an X.25 cloud (which looked exactly like a big puffy cloud). If it was an internal ID department diagram, then someone would usually add four or more legs and a face or some lightning flashes (then it became an X.25 spider, an X.25 sheep, or an X.25 packet storm).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
...what you use to run Final Fantasy VII?
Hrm, maybe it's just my background in systems administration, but I thought cloud computing was just an inevitable combination of large scale web hosting with virtualization.
In late 1990's, businesses generally had their own internet server(s) in a colo facility.
In the early 2000's, some companies outsourced their internet infrastructure to managed service providers - other companies built their own in-house data centers to keep up with escalating application requirements.
In the mid 2000's, server sprawl started to impact practically everyone...the first 100 boxes you deploy can be somewhat interesting, but after that... you're entire admin staff (outsourced or not) ends up spending all its time dealing with faults in existing hardware rather than deploying new services...plus electricity/cooling/etc all get more expensive so everyone starts to figure out ways to avoid putting in new boxes. Poof, in comes with virtualization that's actually reliable and actually interesting when it disassociates the virtual machines from worrying about hardware at all and allows them to move from system to system w/o any need for sysadmins to press the "fail over" or "load balance" buttons.
Now, in 2007, smart marketing and product development people at amazon and elsewhere decide they can take over the web hosting industry by heavily commercializing the large virtualization clusters amazon has already deployed...and poof, wrappers to allow developers to create virtual machines and access back end San storage for the clusters are written, along with other stuff that will appeal to anyone who doesn't have a large existing infrastructure..and it's called "cloud computing". To avoid losing out, everyone else says they have their own cloud computing plans/etc...
Now, I guess this is all there and good...but I always thought that what differentiated good hosting facilities from each other was the quality of the admin staff, customer service, defined SLA's and 24/7 emergency response, comprehensive application monitoring, combined with general availability of senior system architects...all of which I don't think amazon/et al have seriously addressed. That means good managed service or web hosting companies can still succeed by either building their own large virtualization clusters and calling them clouds or rebranding and adding value on top of amazon and other cloud providers.
Gartner defines cloud computing as a style of computing where massively scalable, IT-enabled capabilities are delivered âoeas a serviceâ to external customers using Internet technologies.
So thatâ(TM)s nice and clear. And thatâ(TM)s the point. The term, well, my frank opinion - itâ(TM)s another buzzword introduced to cause confusion in the marketplace and hence near term business opportunities that otherwise might not exist. ASP âoeApplication Service Providerâ ïf SaaS âoeSoftware as a Serviceâ ïf Cloud. It can be easier to cause confused people to part with cash than non-confused people. Confused people feel vulnerable. If you can make them perceive themselves as less confused then you make them perceive themselves as less vulnerable and this makes them less dis-inclined to part with the cash in your direction.
From a technological perspective, well I just see the whole thing as an inevitable step along the road to a long term increasing presence of computer based applications in our environment but at the same time a long term decreasing visibility of computers. Iâ(TM)m surprised, even disappointed, itâ(TM)s taking so long.
A giant step closer to the point at which Skynet becomes self-aware. Given a choice, would you rather have a) a reasonably experienced admin decide what resources the software needs to do its job, or b) the software itself deciding what resources it needs?
An "infrastructural paradigm shift" that cannot be succinctly described. Or even not-succinctly described. A paradigm shift into the unknown.
Suddenly, this sounds a heckuva lot like the late 90's.
Excuse me, I've gotta go find some VC.
cogito ergo dubito
...a term sprinkled liberally through grant proposals, business plans, etc to maximize funding and buzz. It's this year's marketing spin on "Grid Computing".
Now the buzzword is pontificating computing.
Cloud computing refers to a cluster computing environment hosted by a single company. This approach is also referred to as "utility computing," and back around 1999 or so, the companies providing these services used to be called "application service providers."
The difference between cloud computing and grid computing, which was all the rage around 2000 (see the academic Globus project) is that grid computing aggregates *widely* heterogeneous computers under different authorities across Internet-scale wide-area networks. A common approach is aggregating universities' computers to form a large-scale cluster. Disadvantages include the fact that you had to program with MPI, communication latencies are high, and there were a lot of authentication issues.
Cloud computing avoids these difficult issues by having a single company host these services for you, and it's typically being done by the big players who can afford to do so (Amazon, Microsoft, Google). Cluster farms are controlled in data centres under one authority. The programmatic interface is simpler, and computation is typically through a fixed paradigm like MapReduce, although there are known SQL-like approaches to run on clusters. Communication through a GigEthernet is typical in a cluster within a data centre.
Is cloud computing a buzzword? Possibly, but then "multi-core," "data centre," and "XML" used to be buzzwords too. Within five years, doing development on a particular vendor's cloud computing infrastructure may be as viable a (specialised) skill as programming for Windows, Linux, or MacOS.
There is a stone ... at the gallbladder of that cloud.
Cloud computing is a buzzword referring to an environment in which all of your enterprise's data and communications resides in another company's servers. The perceived benefit is that your enterprise does not need to have any of its own servers, and thus your IT department does not need to have any engineers.
IT managers love the concept of cloud computing, as the entire IT budget (beyond what is paid to the company that provided the cloud servers) can be used for salaries and perks for IT managers and their cronies.
Because of this aspect of cloud computing, the companies that provide cloud services try to make their perceived cash costs as low as possible (e.g., "free email servers"), and obtain their revenue stream through other means. These other means commonly include advertising to the users of the cloud servers (who constitute a captive audience) and data-mining what should be the enterprise's confidential intellectual property.
Cloud computing service providers are often multinationals, meaning that the data may end up residing in a different country with very different privacy and data confidentiality laws.
As of 2008, the problem of loss of control over intellectual property and the risk of foreign storage is not generally recognized. The small number of engineers and privacy advocates who sound the alarm are regularly dismissed as cranks who are bitter at being laid off.
Cloud computing is all about visionary modular concepts creating adaptive logistical projection
using a distributed scalable core for multi-tiered background ability resulting in a inverse didactic pricing structure.
I hope I cleared that up. It's actually good to see a healthy level of skepticism on this board.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I think this presents a cloudier issue.
I don't remember "grid computing" being quite the on-demand system that, say, Amazon EC2 is. What makes it cool is the ability to scale it up and down on demand, rather than in months or years.
Or maybe it's some combination of grid computing with virtualization.
And yes, it's pretty much a buzzword. Just like Web 2.0 or AJAX or all the rest. It's a useful abstraction, but not a world-changing "paradigm shift".
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
getting lots of data from sources outside your control.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No, sadly this one is EASY...
Cloud computing is how computing worked in the 1960-80's - large centralized systems that did everything, and you connected to with dumb terminals. Well it's back, but this time with a different name.
Simple yes, but simple is not exciting.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
will place an ad on Dice.com requiring 5 years in depth experience in all aspects of Cloud Computing.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Defining things has always been a problem:
The king's three scholars had accused Nazrudin of heresy, and so he was brought into the king's court for trial.
In his defense, Nazrudin asked the scholars, "Oh wise men, what is bread?"
The first scholar said, "Bread is sustenance; a food."
The second scholar said, "Bread is a combination of flour and water exposed to the heat of a fire."
The third scholar said, "Bread is a gift from God."
Nazrudin spoke to the king, "Your Majesty, how can you trust these men? Is it not strange they cannot agree on the nature of something they eat every day, yet are unanimous that I am a heretic?"
(From The Trial of Nasrudin
A.
Who cares what his opinion is? He owns a book publishing company. A shitty one at that.
Cloud computing is a buzzword in search of a function!
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
lot's of pc's and stuff -|LAN Cloud|->|router |<-->| Internet (big fluffy[scary?] cloud)|<-->|router |<--| LAN 2 Cloud |- lots of other pc's and stuff
(imagine some crappy ascii depiction of the above)
Now we throw a VPN link into this and this becomes the WAN cloud.
Or let's say we get a bunch of leased lines to remote sites and expand our token ring segment off our main LAN...
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
Would one of you smarties please help me with service orientation versus cloud computing? Cloud seems kind of like a very broad service-oriented approach, perhaps the realization of what SO was originally supposed to be... Not just a service bus and attendant service-fed apps behind a corpy firewall, but a wild service approach where you actually do have various services to combine in innovative ways. Oh GOD . I am not good with computer. Please help me out here.
Run like hell because there's a very good chance some vendor just farted in your data center and called it a cloud.
It could also allude to the 'vaporware' that has yet to accomplish anything other than dynamic provisioning and configuration of virtual servers. Sure that's neat, but it doesn't warrant a buzzword.
Marketing loves buzzwords. They could not get what they do to fit any of the accepted definitions of 'grid' , so they picked 'cloud'.
I'm not saying its not useful, just separate the worth from the hype.. currently the hype still tips the scales.
and cloud computing is a lot like fog computing, only it doesn't touch the ground.
Okay, here's what I see cloud computing to be by way of shitty analogy.
It's like having this huge, diverse collection of DVD's, maybe some scratched or artifacting for no reason, some working perfectly, whatever. It's still your collection, and it still allows you to see and use what you want to when you want. Now take them all, throw them out, and subscribe to some shitty on demand TV service and hope that they'll have what you want, let you do what you want with it, use it when you want, not overcharge you, work, and really, really hope they aren't watching everything you're doing. All because this is supposed to be easier, more efficient, and cost effective? Sounds like it's stupid as hell to me.
Why does it seem to me like this is just another dumb ass attempt to try to phase out free/open source software in the commercial market? Why is everything always about control and lessening options while being toted as the greatest thing to ever happen, be it in society, technology, or government?
Leslie Lamport famously defined a distributed system as "one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable".
http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/distributed-system.txt
In this vein, I would define cloud computing as "a computing system in which the failure of a network you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable".
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Cloud computing is actually Japanese for "crowd computing," defined as "a bunch of geeks in one place all computing at the same time."
Anyone else see similarities with Super Mario?!
"This has the advantage of reducing single points of failure." That must be the quest. Definiton unnecessary, for me anyway.
Is a system of programming where you just click on pictures so I can still code after my competitors burn out the part of my brain that uses language.
(steadys hand carefully to click preview button instead of cancel)
Plus cloud platforms/OS have become more usuable and buyable from various vendors - Amazon, IBm, Google, Sun ...