Cloud Computing

In an article I read this morning stated that “cloud computing was a little like teenage sex. Everyone talks about it, few actually do it, and even fewer do it right!” This really got me laughing at 7am this morning!! He also stated that “According to Pew Research, anyone with a Gmail or YouTube account is participating in the cloud computing revolution. ” http://soa.sys-con.com/node/862933

This client server technology could be the best thing that has happened to the corporate world in a long time. However, the corporate world would really need to actually adopt it. I would save a tremendous amount of money on corporate licenses to Microsoft, Oracle, etc. The technology could be much more secure, a lot less information would be “leaked” out from disgruntled employees, or corporate spies – does anyone still do that??

Microsoft says that it can save corporate businesses on average $470,000 *if* companies use their virtualization software.

Cost Savings with Microsoft Virtualization

Types of Cloud Computing

This is where I learned the most about it. I really thought that cloud computing was just the applications on the server. Not all the different types, but now that I have read it, it does make sense why they are included.

Utility computing. Amazon’s success in providing virtual machine instances, storage, and computation at pay-as-you-go utility pricing was the breakthrough in this category, and now everyone wants to play. Developers, not end-users, are the target of this kind of cloud computing.

Platform as a Service. One step up from pure utility computing are platforms like Google AppEngine and Salesforce’s force.com, which hide machine instances behind higher-level APIs. Porting an application from one of these platforms to another is more like porting from Mac to Windows than from one Linux distribution to another.

Cloud-based end-user applications. Any web application is a cloud application in the sense that it resides in the cloud. Google, Amazon, Facebook, twitter, flickr, and virtually every other Web 2.0 application is a cloud application in this sense.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/10/web-20-and-cloud-computing.html

There are a lot of pros and of course some cons to cloud computing. I can see that the cost is a HUGE pro, and just the fact that we have people who hack into the presidents website, just for fun, is of course is a HUGE con. There are plenty of little pros and cons that deal with the need for a serious rack of redundant servers. So there can be a big cost on the providers side.

As a user, this can be a really great innovation, as you can check email, edit documents, update spreadsheets etc on the go, no matter where you are. As a web developer though, yes you can edit the code from anywhere – including in your clients office. However, doing graphics and actual art designs may not totally be available yet. I may have to do some more research on this, I beleive that Photoshop has some web applications. Ok, they do it’s called Photoshop Express, and it looks like it’s just a photo sharing site, but not a graphic design site. So, it looks like I will still need to look around for one….

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