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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."
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?
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.
Ars Technica has a very nice response to this: http://arst.ch/722
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.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
While Doctorow has a point, running an in-house data center is hardly something that lacks recurring costs. Once you get past the hype, the benefit of cloud computing is that it should be possible to leverage technical expertise and management across a much larger user base. The number of people you need who really understand email servers does not go up linearly with the number of users served.
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?
Test your net with Netalyzr
You didn't RTFA, did you?
Perhaps the government should provide 'Universal Cloud Service' to everyone for free.
There's a guy here named "badanalogyguy". I think you have him beat. Nice try getting your offtopic and illogical political view somehow incorporated into the topic, though.
Free Martian Whores!
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.
Well you get a flat rate for that disk and CPU sitting next to your desk that will be worth nothing in 3 years.
Or you can spend $15-20 a month and get a constantly refreshed and updated/upgraded system every time you turn it on.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
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.
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
how dare they try to provide a service for people to use and actually charge for it. Perhaps the government should provide 'Universal Cloud Service' to everyone for free. (except of course for the taxes they are charged for it to hide the actual cost)
They are welcome to provide these services if they want to, this is just an article to explain to those who will listen why cloud computing is pushed so hard. It is a warning to not become dependant on "the cloud" because you and I probably don't know what it'll become, but it is likely that investors are flocking to "the cloud" in the hopes that they can grab control of anything, and then profit from that control. That probably isn't good for the users of the cloud.
I have pretty much stopped using proprietary software since I noticed how inevitably my interests will conflict with the interests of the proprietary software maker. I will look for open stuff first, and only if there isn't an alternative will I use proprietary stuff, like Google Earth and some games.
Cloud computing is just proprietary computing by another name. It can still be useful, but the control lies with the cloud owner rather than the user.
Car analogies break down.
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.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
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.
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!
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,
So you keep all your money in your home?
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
Cloud computing is useless for the average user. Who in their right mind would wants to store everything important to them on an advanced cluster for a monthly fee?
You're assuming that a typical user doesn't have their home computer stuffed full of spy-ware, that they know how to backup everything that matters to them and that they only ever want to access their files from a single location and from a single device. Faceless-mega corporation 'in the cloud' is likely to be much better at managing that data than a typical home user. Even if privacy suffers a bit, at least it will do so in defined and publicised ways (compare and contrast with the problems of techs at the local repair shop rummaging through your data).
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.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
At least he finally shut up about not having a TV. Count your blessings, dude.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"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.
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.
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.
Cory is only repeating what I've been saying for years now: the "cloud" is merely the latest spin on trying to "re-educate" people to accept software subscriptions in place of one-time software licenses. There has been an ongoing effort for many years to rebrand software as "content", for much of which people have already become accustomed to paying a monthly fee. If Big Software succeeds in convincing people that software is content, then this battle is lost and we'll all wind up paying for software by the month, cloud or no cloud.
I've said it here repeatedly, blogged about it in my little backwater blog, with nary a modding-up in sight, but now Doctorow parrots the same allegation after all this time and suddenly it's news? I guess I should derive satisfaction from the fact that finally people might take notice of the unintentional conspiracy at work here.
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.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
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.
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.
>>>it's not computing in the cloud as much as rental of desktop applications.
Shush. You are bringing "negative energy" to our cloud computing cult. We don't want logic here.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall