Doctorow On What Cloud Computing Is Really For

Diabolus Advocatus alerts us to an article Cory Doctorow has up on guardian.co.uk, addressing what cloud computing really means for the average consumer: "The tech press is full of people who want to tell you how completely awesome life is going to be when everything moves to 'the cloud' — that is, when all your important storage, processing and other needs are handled by vast, professionally managed data-centers. Here's something you won't see mentioned, though: the main attraction of the cloud to investors and entrepreneurs is the idea of making money from you, on a recurring, perpetual basis, for something you currently get for a flat rate or for free without having to give up the money or privacy that cloud companies hope to leverage into fortunes."

Comments

I'm not sure I understand

[jasonmicron]

I've seen "Cloud Computing" around as a buzzword but I never really cared to investigate what it really was.

I'm assuming it is essentially paying a data center to host my data from my home system? Why in the hell would I even WANT to do that?

Or did I completely miss the bus? Something I missed?

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[MathFox]

Or did I completely miss the bus? Something I missed?

You missed the lock in model of being forced to work with the applications that the cloud provider supports.

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[slim]

It's something you don't need to care about, unless you're hosting a service that needs to scale. Then "The Cloud" is an unspecified bunch of computers out there, and your application is spread across them in such a way that if some of them break, things are redistributed across the rest.

This is what Google, Amazon etc. use to provide their search app, their shop, and so on.

The big, newish, thing, is that now you don't need to be as big as Amazon or Google to host your app on a cloud platform, since they'll sell you space on theirs.

As a consumer, you needn't care how the web apps you use are hosted. Just be happy that they're there and they don't slow down just because a million other people have signed up.

As the guy running the site, though, it's huge. If you build an app right, on one of these cloud platforms, you can start very cheap indeed, only paying for what you need, and scale instantly (or even automatically) as demand increases.

You're an online shop selling Christmas goods? Host it on a cloud, rein it right back to a low capacity service ten months a year, then crank it up to hundreds of servers in November and December, and back again in January.

Hope this explains it.

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[Insanity Defense]

Or did I completely miss the bus? Something I missed? You missed the lock in model of being forced to work with the applications that the cloud provider supports.

Or did I completely miss the bus? Something I missed?

You missed the lock in model of being forced to work with the applications that the cloud provider supports.

Also the bit where your data is locked into whatever file formats the cloud provider has and you will have difficulty maintaining your own back ups and migrating to a different provider if the current one is inadequate or fails.

Imagine the Outer Limits Control Voice telling you how they control your data and how you use it.

There is nothing wrong with your computer.

Do not attempt to install software. We are controlling what you may use and do.

We will control the file formats.

We will control the data.

We control all that you may do with your computer and your data.

Experience the awe and majesty of paying us for the use of your own data in ways that we strictly control and limit.

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[bonch]

It's a renaming of the word "internet" so that tech writers can have a new buzzword now that "Web 2.0" and "blogs" have gone stale. Do you use internet mail such as Gmail? Do you play with an open source project hosted on Sourceforge? Apparently, using services in the same old client-server paradigm we always have is now "cloud computing," even though such a phrase implies parallel processing, multiple servers, and redundant storage.

Apparently, I was "cloud computing" in the 90s when I was using Hotmail.

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[maxwell demon]

The theory is that if it is in the cloud, they handle the hardware, backup, processing, and security. All you have is a connection to your data/software.

It's not your software. It's their software.

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[slim]

It's not your software. It's their software.

Depends. If I host Wordpress on Amazon EC2, it's my software.

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[nacturation]

Let's say you were starting up a new tech site and your website was going to be the greatest thing since Slashdot. So you plan on having Slashdot-levels of traffic. You do a bit of planning and expect that you'd need about 8 front-end web servers to distribute the load, 4 beefy database servers, and a couple more for handling your email, DNS, backups, and whatever else. So let's say that adds up to 16 servers. And (hand waving here) let's say that total hardware cost comes to $50,000.

To host those servers, you're going to need a data center. So you'll need to find a provider and pay them roughly $1000/month for a rack to put them in. On top of that, you'll need to pay for bandwidth which let's say is another $1000/month. You'll also need a system administrator to manage all those servers. So your first year cost is:

$50,000 - servers
$12,000 - rack space
$12,000 - bandwidth
$100,000 - administrator
------
$174,000 - total

That's non-cloud computing. Cloud computing comes in several different models. The first is utility computing. Instead of shelling out $50,000 for all that hardware, why not pay a provider like Amazon for their EC2 systems? You're essentially paying on an hourly basis for the use of their servers, but you can scale up or down easily to account for traffic spikes and dips. If you only need 8 web servers and 4 database servers during peak times, you can perhaps save a bit. And if you really only need 2 database and 2 web servers, then you haven't paid for a lot of hardware that's collecting dust. If you really do need all that power all of the time, then you'd pay Amazon more in hourly fees than it would cost to buy it all yourself.

The second way is a hybrid. You still have all your own servers, but you use services from various companies to implement your system. Amazon's S3 storage for example. You continue to host the main hardware, but you rely on these external services for additional functionality. In the case of Amazon S3, it gives you access to very high speed static file hosting and essentially unlimited amounts of storage at a fairly reasonable cost.

The last way is going all cloud. Your services run on a provider's infrastructure and you have no concept of a physical server. If your site receives more traffic, the provider automagically creates more instances of your service to handle the load. This is the Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure models. All the data is stored and managed by the provider. It's still your data and all these providers have confidentiality clauses. Barring a court order, nobody will (or, more accurately, should) be snooping into the data they store on your behalf. You don't need to worry about firewalls, security patching, hardware issues at 3 in the morning, and so on.

I've simplified this down to a few different models... there are many other possibilities as well, such as all cloud with a few dedicated colo servers to handle specific tasks, but that's the nutshell.

Think of it like getting a safety deposit box at a bank. You could build your own safe, professionally install it, hire security guards to watch it around the clock, have alarms and monitoring systems, etc. If you need enough storage such that the bank would charge you through the nose to use their safety deposit boxes, then building your own makes sense. For smaller scale operations, you're better off paying the bank to use their safety deposit box. They're experts at managing security risk, and you can be pretty confident that they'll do a good job.

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[vertinox]

I've seen "Cloud Computing" around as a buzzword but I never really cared to investigate what it really was.

Its euphemism for "outsourcing".

Makes it sense when you think about it.

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[mlts]

My concern is that having cloud providers store companys' data means that it is a bigger target for thieves and blackhats than decentralized storage. There are a lot of eggs in that cloud provider's basket.

Even legit uses, all it would take would be a bankruptcy or sale of the cloud assets, and even the most well written privacy and TOS contract will go out the window, perhaps allowing the buyer complete and unrestricted use of the information. Rival company to you or an ally? Their trade secrets are now yours. Someone offshore wants to know the exact chemical process that is highly confidental because it gives 50% more yield of methane from cow farts than any competitors? They got it.

This doesn't mean cloud storage is useless. This just means that companies need an encryption layer before a single bit hits the cloud. This could mean using EncFS or a CFS layer for filesystem layer encryption, or a device that sits on the LAN and virtualizes the cloud storage. Local boxes pass it the data to stick on the cloud, the appliance encrypts it and does the remote read/writes.

Cloud sharing of CPU, is also risky. One never knows if someone would take a snapshot of running processes serverside, then copy that somewhere for analysis for anything they could figure out. This might be useful if someone is needing a bunch of webservers to mirror data for a planned capacity spike, to mirror public information. However for anything else, it treads on risky territory, especially if the data is something that Sarbanes Oxley or HIPAA cover.

Cloud computing is not something to be abolutely shunned, but it isn't something to be embraced completely. It is another generation of client server stuff on a higher computing layer (web layer, where with Javastations and some Xstations Java was the app layer, VT100 terminals were lower than that.)

What would make a company a killing would be a hardware appliance, or a software solution that would allow encryption and enterprise key management, with a passthrough interface between it to a commercial disk cloud.

Re:I'm not sure I understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Why buy a $1500 computer when you can get 100x more power from a $100 thin client and $20 a month. (or what ever)

Show me a vendor selling 100x the computing power of a $1500 computer for $20/mo, and I'll show you a vendor who is about to go out of business.

That said your comment is telling, in that the idea only makes sense if you lie about the actual costs involved.

The Profit

[TheBilgeRat]

I guess one more reason to read the EULA before committing your website/app/etc to the cloud. Not a shocker that selling your personal info is a much anticipated profit stream.

Re:evil corporations

[iamhigh]

Apparently you hate the idea of universal health care... but do you have to try to bring it up in every conversation? This has nothing to do with govt/market; it is about private companies that used to sell you a computer to do and save stuff now want you to rent a computer (for lack of better analogy) to do and store stuff.

While this might be nice to some who have no intention on maintaining a computer and care not for privacy, many people would not like these services (and some of the rates are outrageous... some not so bad). How did your bring the government in this convo? That makes me think you haven't really put any thought into your position on healthcare.

Misunderstanding

[oahazmatt]

Right now, the biggest issue I see facing Cloud Computing isn't the cost but the blatant misunderstanding that some people have as to what Cloud Computing actually is. I work with so many people who have absolutely no idea when it comes to Cloud Computing. One co-worker told me he was setting up a new website for himself. I asked him what hosting provider he was using. His response: "None. I'm putting on the cloud." Another co-worker saw me looking at a screenshot of someone who had over 20 virtual machines running on his PC at one time. He looked at me and said "That had to be done on the cloud."

I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of Cloud Computing. If providers can make money of off this new platform, more power to them. I just wish we could establish a large billboard that explained in detail what it was.

Re:Heads in the clouds

[TooMuchToDo]

Good article, I coundn't find anything to argue with in it. I never did understand why the concept of "cloud computing" was attractive to anyone. I wish someone would explain it to me.

No upfront investment. Example: Amazon invests huge amounts of cash in infrastructure so they can handle transactions at peak times (Christmas). The rest of the year that gear sits idle. You get to use it for your app at a per hour rate, and it will scale quickly if your app/site/whatever are a hit. Have an idea but not the gear to demo it? You use the cloud, and your only cost is the rental time fee. Have a hugely popular site already? You use dedicated equipment in your own space.

Small Monthly Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

Cloud computing works on the "frog in a pot" principle. Slowly increase the temperature, and the frog doesn't know it's being boiled alive.

-Don't worry about backup, let us do it, for a small monthly fee.

-Don't store your data locally, let us do it, for a small monthly fee.

-Don't worry about software, let us provide it for you, for a small monthly fee.

-Don't worry about a PC, let us provide one for you, for a small monthly fee.

Think it won't work? It already does. Look at your cellphone. You don't own it, you don't own any of it's data, you rent it, for a couple of small monthly fees, and some small "pay per use" fees.

Lets look at the XBOX model. You "own" the hardware, but ultimately, Microsoft gets to decide what you can do with it.

XBox live is your "small monthly fee". Expect the next version of XBox to be a rental only agreement.

You get all the "convenience", but none of the service guarantees, security, responsibility, etc.

They get all your "small monthly fees", and all your personal data.

Jeez, the clould is not a conspiracy

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a just a fucking technology to make managing those backend servers easier. Not good or not bad.

Now exporting your local business apps to a web-based software service does have implications that having nothing to do with these useless cloud computing conspiracy nutters who see evil coporate machinations like the religious right sees that face of mary in every potato chip.

Take a look at the advantage.

[Drakin020]

for something you currently get for a flat rate or for free without having to give up the money or privacy that cloud companies hope to leverage into fortunes."

Did it ever occur to you that maybe some people don't want to have to worry about upgrades, viruses, slowness, etc... If someone out there can provide computer access to users with the protection from Viruses, hardware becoming obsolete, and other general hardware problems, what's the problem in that?

This could work well for the elderly who just don't want to deal with all the crap that comes with owning a computer.

Re:Take a look at the advantage.

[spinkham]

If they don't want Windows problems, there's always Mac/Linux/*BSD.
Lets see:

• Slowness, protection from viruses - Non-Microsoft OS makes this much less a problem
• Upgrades, hardware becoming obsolete - Again, non-MS OS helps here, and applies to "cloud enabled services" also - either cloud or local can use current programs and tech, but upgrades to either has an equal chance of needing hardware upgrades
• General Hardware problems - Same as above, you still need hardware to connect to "the cloud". You can get a full-on PC for less then $300 US these days, crippled "Cloud" hardware won't be much cheaper to replace.

The one valid argument I can see is it makes data integrity someone else's' problem, but a simple backup service ala timemachine or "cloud based" subscription backup can take care of that.

Re:Take a look at the advantage.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did it ever occur to you that maybe some people don't want to have to worry about upgrades, viruses, slowness, etc...

There are two problems with your argument-as-question. First, you still have a thin client that accesses the cloud. For now, for many, that's still a Windows PC that is prone to common viruses. Second, and more importantly, you assume that there is no trade-off for the application in the cloud. Imagine a company providing a medical records system for hundreds or thousands of private practices across the country. A single hack of that infrastructure may expose a very large amount of personal data. This is not unlike the problems plaguing the credit card industry.

Granted, you may lessen the role of the classic PC virus, or PC maintenance with everything in the cloud. But in so doing you increase the value of a whole host of other kinds of malicious activity.

Re:What are they talking about?

[poetmatt]

allow me to provide an analogy, it's like this:

your computer becomes a kindle, and all the apps on it, all of your own data, all of your storage, all of your privacy becomes the ebooks. That means they can be revoked, you don't own them, and you pay more than you used to for the same stuff people get for free/elsewhere. Oh and if their cloud (drm) servers go down, you have no access. Whoops.

What's your convenience? Hey, you got a kindle! whee!

Re:Of course we can trust "The Cloud"

[slim]

So you keep all your money in your home?

Re:Heads in the clouds

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, so what happens during Christmas time when they ARE using the majority of the resources they have available? Does that mean I'll just have to deal with a lower resource pool and subsequently crappier service? No thanks. I'm not a big fan of all this fancy pants cloud stuff.

Re:Heads in the clouds

[Attila Dimedici]

I never did understand why the concept of "cloud computing" was attractive to anyone. I wish someone would explain it to me.

You mean you couldn't understand why all of the big players in software and computer services thought that "cloud computing" was great? You couldn't understand why they wanted people to migrate to a system where they get to charge people a recurring fee to provide services people were getting for a one time fee? What is so hard to understand about why people find "cloud computing " attractive? They get to make more money.
Oh, you couldn't understand why the people who were being asked to pay that money found "cloud computing" attractive? Oh that's easy, it was the latest fad and all the "cool kids" were going to be doing it. If you weren't into "cloud computing", you just weren't with it.

Obvious man is obvious

[DerekLyons]

"Here's something you won't see mentioned, though: the main attraction of the cloud to investors and entrepreneurs is the idea of making money from you, on a recurring, perpetual basis, for something you currently get for a flat rate or for free"

Duh. If the idea can't make money - it's unlikely to stay around if it even happens in the first place. That's the way the world works Cory.

On top of which... Most of things we get for 'free' are actually either a) ad supported or b) free because the company providing them has revenue from elsewhere and needs to build their brand. They aren't really 'free'. The same goes for 'flat rate', the services are generally subsidized and oversubscribed because the provider is betting (usually correctly) that 99.9999% of the users won't ever use the capacity they've signed up for.

The balance of his comment is essentially a Dvorak style rant, meaningless and somewhat disconnected from reality. But, like all pundits, if he doesn't keep the hits coming he has to stop eating... So rants pull the eyeballs and pay the bills.

Even in the clouds.

Cloud relies

[tepples]

Why buy a $1500 computer when you can get 100x more power from a $100 thin client and $20 a month. (or what ever)

Because ISPs in the United States with a wireless last mile (3G or satellite) still charge on the order of $60 per month for on the order of 5 GB per month. Or because I want to do something and see the result happen without a second of lag.

Every time you use Google you are using the cloud.

Which is fine because I am using a service through the network to search for other resources that can be used through the network, and the resources don't need instant response. But at times, I might have no connection to the network, or I might have such a slow connection (either low bandwidth or high latency) that interacting becomes unbearable.

Re:Cloud relies

[commodore64_love]

>>>(aka "terminal" in 70s [and also 80s] technology)

This is the man reason why I'm against cloud computing. I remember having to do college work via the central computer, and you could only do it with a terminal, which meant you had to be online. It was a major hassle. Having the software on our OWN machines freed us to work anytime, anywhere without needing a connection. Cloud computing strikes me as a step backwards to a darker time.

Re:Cloud relies

[tepples]

But now you're online everywhere, all the time, or close to it.

I'm not because I don't have $719.40 per year plus tax for a MiFi gateway.

I feel powerless using a computer without an Internet gateway. Don't you?

Not especially. If I know I'll be away from the net for a few hours, I'm perfectly capable of loading the tools for at least one of my projects onto a flash drive before I leave.

Re:Cloud relies

[commodore64_love]

>>>I'm not [online everywhere] because I don't have $719.40 per year plus tax for a MiFi gateway.

I'm glad you brought that up. People claim buying a terminal/thin client will be cheaper than buying a whole PC, but that's simply not true. You end-up spending MORE money on annual software rental, plus enhanced online connectivity, than if you simply bought the stuff. Renting is always more expensive than owning. This cloud computing idea makes about as much sense as RIAA's proposals that we rent MP3 downloads instead of owning them. Or the way carmakers push leasing cars instead of buying them. This idea is just a way to make more money which is why the Megacorporations are pushing it so hard.

Clouds are not solid enough

[tecnico.hitos]

It's the latest take on thin-client to server connectivity. Why buy a $1500 computer when you can get 100x more power from a $100 thin client and $20 a month. (or what ever)

The main difference this time is a web browser typically becomes your thin client and the server is actually a massively parallel cluster of servers. Every time you use Google you are using the cloud.

The problem is that you become dependent of the cloud. If your network fails or the server overloads, the $100 client/netbook/whatever will not be able to handle the same tasks.

It's good to have local devices capable of accomplishing the tasks you need. Cloud computing have its advantages, but isn't as reliable.

Re:What a tool.

[tepples]

All your data can be encrypted, so that only you (and of course, whichever hosts you send the keys to) can read it.

But if your storage provider lets you search it, it isn't so encrypted now, is it? An application that uses encrypted cloud storage would have to store the indexes (e.g. the directory structure for an online file system) locally.

In fact, this is one of the places trusted computing could help, although you have to assume that someone out there could still compromise your security with a system like that; still, it raises the bar considerably when you're talking about sending your code out for remote execution.

That's another way to think about digital restrictions management: the owner of copyright in a work is executing it on a "cloud" of end users' machines.

WTF? He says this and it is news?

[netcaretaker]

Come on, this is somehow news because Doctorow says it? You have not noticed that when you get an email in google that all of a sudden the ads that are around the edges have something to do with what is in the email you are reading? If you put it in the cloud, those who own the cloud, own you and your data, NOT new news. And because of that, it will never happen in my world, I will pay someone to host my server, but I am not letting someone host my DATA.

Re:TCO != 0 for traditional data centers

[SectoidRandom]

This argument always crops up when /. talks about "cloud computing", I don't buy it at all. Probably because I've spent the best part of the last 10 years working in outsourced IT support of some kind. The fact is that *a lot* (wish I could find statistics on this) of companies already fully outsource their IT support, what does that mean? When there Exchange server goes down they rely on the SLA in place to get it fixed by the support provider.

How is that any different to what we now call "cloud computing"?

Software as a Service (SaaS - what cloud computing really is) is a model that is growing massively today, ever heard of Sales Force? Can you explain how Sales Force is able to compete against Oracle and SAP so effectively? Is it because all that "useless" customer data in the CRM and ERP systems of any company are nowhere near as critical as email?