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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."
Doctorow's gripe is NOT about cloud computing, but Software as a Service setups, where the software is externally hosted.
"Cloud Computing" is a very nebulous term, ranging from online apps in the browser (Google Apps) to high level compute APIs (Map-Reduce etc) to low level VM hosting and storage (Amazon EC2/S3).
The interesting things, IMO, from the cloud point of view are the compute side, which is a windfall (we used EC2 to great effect with Netalyzr), and the reliability/infrastructure offloading.
And let's do a puzzle here. Yes, a cheap computer is just that, CHEAP, which implies unreliable. Gmail, for all its griping, has pretty much 99.99% uptime. Does Doctorow realize how much even that level of reliability costs when done in-house?
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Moving people from their own computing resources to yours is about one fundamental: control. I control my PC in ways that I normally have a great deal of say about (sure, "regular people" may have to hire consultants or expert systems to regain control of their systems, but at least the potential is there).
The recurring payment model is the modern gold rush... companies are willing to give you "free" satellite STBs, cell phones, etc. in return for knowing they're getting your $50-$100 back on a regular basis. This also moves to an interesting market model. With regular purchases, you probably have to convince me that you're the best for my needs, if I'm a well informed consumer. With contracts, once I've bought in, you need to finr the minimal amount of satisfaction that keep the vast majority of your customers "hooked". So people love and defend their choice of Nikon over Canon, or Sony over Panasonic, for the most part. But everyone complains about their cable company, their cellular provider, etc. And yet, those are the guys making the Big Bucks.
So it's inevitable that web services will go in that direction, at least some of the time. There's currently little precedent for getting consumers to pay, but "cloud" subscriptions are at the same time being sold to business as an alternative to expensive desktop tools (even when free desktop tools are also available). For some business use, it's not going to be about the money, per se. They might actually prefer a subscription to a lump payment... that makes expenses predictable... the same reason many businesses lease equipment, rather than buy, even though the long-term expense is greater.
But what they'll really be buying is control. Many companies work hard to keep workers from installing "unapproved" software applications. Move everyone to the cloud, and they lose the ability to customize anything you don't want customized. This is probably the engine that'll push business into the cloud, and get them to pay.
For consumers, follow the cell/cable model... if you sign up for two years of Bubba Jones' computing services, we'll send you a netbook (running a ChromeOS style OS that puts everything under control of the cloud services, even though some local storage will still be possible). There are enough people unconcerned about "real" desktop computing that this will probably seem like a good deal. Particularly if they're unable to do the real math. Which many won't... ask any iPhone toting friend what they paid for their iPhone.. they'll usually say "$200" or some such. When in fact, they're probably paying a total of something like $2000-$3000 over the course of two years, once you factor in the contract costs. But if it's a slow enough bleed, and you keep them happy enough, folks don't notice.
-Dave Haynie
It seems as though there are, really, two quite different flavors of "cloud computing" at issue here with very dissimilar properties.
On the one hand, you have something like Gmail: Basically everything there(your data, all the code, etc.) is on their systems and under their control. On the other hand, you have something like EC2, which is basically just VPS hosting with higher-than-traditional provisioning speed.
The first type creates real risk(particularly for more unsophisticated users) of the expensive longterm rental replacing ownership problem we've seen with other industries. (Consider poor old Grandma, still renting a phone from AT&T decades after 3rd party devices were allowed, cable box rental fees, and all the other attempts to tie individuals to a recurring charge setup). The situation isn't all bad; but there is real room for concern.
The second type seems much less threatening. First, it'll be aimed largely at more sophisticated users, who will have more options and negotiating room. Second, the potential for easier migration will presumably keep costs down and service relatively high. Something like EC2 is largely standard(the compute VMs you are allocated) or fairly simple(the mechanism for requesting/provisioning more) and available in independent implementation. Amazon can still crush the little guys through scale and efficiency; but there is nothing stopping you from going somewhere else, or running your own, if they decide to abuse the power.
Given that Doctorow is writing for a popular publication, about the impact on joe user, I'd say his warnings are justified. They may well not be justified for you but all the whinging in the world about how simple it is(for you) to just run your own server won't change the fact that you'll be surrounded by people paying more than they expected every month for the cloud(just like they do for all the other "services" in their lives). However, it isn't at all clear that his warnings usefully apply to the commercial sense of "cloud computing" where it basically just means hosting.
The web was supposed to be a cloud to begin with. I think services like Opera Unite are pulling in the opposite direction and reinforcing what the web was supposed to be like to begin with.
Did you know that the HTTP protocol has PUT and DELETE commands? As far as I can tell no browser implements them. It does explain why we have primitive authentication.
I call services like Opera Unite and Mozilla Weave a personal cloud because they can be hosted yourselves. The Opera servers only provide hole punching between unite users.
This is an example of what I want to see http://jkontherun.com/2009/06/16/opera-unite/
and my here.
It's sad that our society's photographs are on Facebook in low quality. The big tech companies want to make us powerless over our data and retain control of them.
Subscriptions have always been more profitable than actual game sales. Blizzard is laughing its way to the bank after selling the game and then asking for more money to play the game you already paid for.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
I'm neither especially pro-cloud or anti-cloud, but I'm getting really sick of the people saying that compute is going to be just like electricity or POTS or some other utility. Their assumption there is that they can provide some sort of generic "compute unit" that customers can just plug in to and use on demand. The problem is that network-enabled applications are far more complex than plugging in a toaster. OLTP is different from scientific computing, which is different from graphics rendering, and none of them are similar to what most people use their PCs for. Some require little CPU or RAM, but extremely high I/O, others need a ton of RAM but little CPU (can anyone say Java??). They keep saying that "there's already a generic interface - TCP/IP". WTF? You gotta be kidding me if you think that Amazon or Google is just going to give me generic TCP/IP access to their data center! Can I use EC2 to run a bit torrent client? Tor? Test the next version of nmap or nessus? Whew, I need a smoke after that rant!
myspace.com/johnnyfreakingcocaine
Do I use gmail ? certainly not ! Ewww !
And yes.. I do have a single server somewhere I use to handle my e-mail.. and my DNS.. (only thing is I have to hire the service of a registrar to write stuff in the ICANN db.. but I can live with that)
Do I use Google Docs ? You've got to be kidding right ?
Do I use collaborative solutions to author documents.. sure.. e-mails, mailing lists (which I can eventually host by myself should it become necessary) and a couple tools I host on the aforementioned server
Online backup service ? YUCK ! I have a few machines here and there and cross backup (ok.. so it IS Online Backup.. but I *know* were my stuff is located).
And I don't even have (or want) an iPhone !
So ! there !
(well... you weren't actually asking ME the question were you ?)
--Ivan
Yea, no, I'm not doing that. I'd rather keep my computer and not run a thin client and "trust" that the company isn't monitoring what I'm using "their" server cluster for. The exception I have to that rule is Google docs.
Agreed. Sorry, but when I read that the first thing that occurred to me was "all of this because the average person thinks Windows is too hard, or otherwise refuses to get a clue." What concerns me is that buzzword-ridden ideas like cloud computing will probably appeal to the non-technical masses (addicts to convenience that they are), to the point that the rest of us may be forced to partially or wholly accept them. I really don't care to give up even a small fraction of my privacy merely because Joe Sixpack couldn't be bothered to read a book or two. There's no justice in it.
This reminds me of the more asinine software EULAs which not only state the standard fact that you don't really own anything despite having paid for it, but also state that the vendor has no liability no matter what happens, not even when the software fails to perform as advertised (I think they call it "suitability for purpose" and expressly disclaim it). If the cloud computing vendors decide to implement a TOS like that, then your data is effectively held hostage and you have no recourse if something happens to it. What would be their real incentive not to do things that way? An informed, technically literate public which fully understands all of these issues? Yeah, right.
Like any and all proposals to do for you what you can easily do for yourself while charging you for the privilege, this has "bad idea" written all over it. As though all of the buzzwords didn't tip you off...
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
You missed the lock in model of being forced to work with the applications that the cloud provider supports.
Just like with a desktop app, if the provider chooses to lock you in, you're locked in. If they let you export to a standards based format, you're fine.
Any time I choose to export my messages out of GMail, I can do so (of course, due to volume, it may take some time).
Only it appears that you won't be. See Eucalyptus, which is an open source implementation of the Amazon API. Since Amazon is the 300 lb gorilla currently and it's API appears to be on the way of being the defacto standard, having Eucalyptus around means that other cloud service providers can use the same API and steal some of Amazon's business, and users can switch to another provider as necessary or desired.
There are definitely reasons not to use clouds, but lock-in isn't one of them.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
It is a just a fucking technology to make managing those backend servers easier. Not good or not bad.
The most informative post here is yours, AC. Cloud computing is about businesses reducing their IT costs by using other companies' servers. It's not about Joe Schmoe getting rid of his cheap hard drive and putting all his information online. Cory's example of S3 is an example of the relatively small amount of overlap, and it's presumably not too evil for he himself to use.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
OK, I'll bite. As someone who runs a SaaS product (http://gimlet.us, in case you care), I can assure you that we're not trying to nickel-and-dime our customers. We're trying to provide useful software at a reasonable price — nothing more, nothing less.
I've run a very similar open-source project, and found that by far, the most frequent question from people was "how do I get this running?" I talked to many people who wanted to try it, only to find that their IT department was an obstacle. One person told me — no lie — that their IT staff would charge $26,000 to install a small PHP/MySQL app.
Offering our software as a hosted service means we can provide it to nontechnical users without needing the help or approval of their sysadmins. It means that deploying patches is relatively straightforward, and that installers and packaging are things we just don't need to worry about. Instead, we can spend our (limited!) development time making our app better.
Will we, at some point, offer our code "for sale" as an installable, locally-run product? Almost certainly. However, the demand hasn't been there so far, so our efforts have been focused elsewhere.
Yes, there are some real concerns about putting your data up in someone else's cloud. But the idea that we're offering our app as a service to fleece people is simply not accurate.
Sure I do..
But this is pretty much *ONE* way.. (except for any coordinate or mouse movement)..
And of course, I also (extensively) use google's search service (which could probable have been a much better example !)
But I don't *store* anything on google maps.. or the search engine. If it were to fail.. to fold.. or whatever, I'd still have basic service. I wouldn't have lost 10 years of documents.. google (or whoever comes next) wouldn't be scanning my documents for every pesky little detail about my life.. and I wouldn't be - all of a sudden - asked to dish out 50% of my income so that I can retrieve that information (not saying they will.. but with the current state of affair.. so probably *could*)
I'm not saying we should *never* rely on external services.. I'm just saying I'd rather (while I can) keep control over whatever I can (ok.. call me a control freak.. maybe I am !)
--Ivan
Why buy a $1500 computer when you can get 100x more power from a $100 thin client and $20 a month.
Because I don't trust Microsoft, Google, or whoever with my data? They could lose it, data mine it, or sell it to my competitors to maximize their profit. If you think paying someone a monthly fee is better than hosting your own data and apps, well then your data must not be worth much in the first place. Not to mention the fact that distributed apps running over the network will usually (although not always) be slower than running them locally.
By the way, isn't anybody who uses Flickr already using "cloud computing"?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.