Cloud Computing More of the Same: “To the Cloud”

by Eric Gordon

After completing all of the readings and all of the posts from this semester, I have come to determine that the hype of cloud computing is real. This however is nothing new and revolutionary, just a way to accomplish old tasks in a new way. This new way is being on the network. To me, cloud computing is just a buzzword where we can insert web applications the majority of the time. Services like iCloud, Amazon web services, Microsoft SkyDrive are nothing we haven’t utilized before. These are just a more efficient way of delivering them to us. We live in a connected world these days. Just about everyone has a smartphone, laptop, or tablet device. If you are using Gmail, Dropbox, Google Docs you are essentially using cloud computing.  The only reason the term even was used is because network diagrams represent the internet as a cloud.

The defining characteristic of the cloud is the internet. I still feel like cloud computing is not going to take the whole business world by storm. I think it presents advantages for small to medium sized companies to be able to offer better services then they currently can. The larger corporations will continue to do everything in house, and utilize their own private clouds.

There are some problems with the cloud I feel haven’t occurred yet. Companies are getting used to getting their data to third party vendors, but we still don’t know how they can get it back. If a company goes out of business, or has a massive catastrophe, what will happen to the business who is their customer? This allowed us to look at distributed infrastructures and the problems with record locking and eventual consistency.

I think companies will be weary of the cloud until the security has been proven. The cost savings is another that is undetermined. You might save a lot of money in the beginning by throwing away your hardware and all of your server admins. In time though that might prove troublesome and costly to the

The definitive characteristic of the cloud is the practice of using a network of remote servers on the internet to process and store data instead of a local server at a high level is what the cloud is all about. We as computing students took a more in depth approach to look at security, and CAP theorem to better understand the cloud. Companies like IBM and HP have to go on TV and promote cloud computing to companies like it is revolutionary in order to get new business. I don’t fault them for that, but the cloud is an evolutionary step to completing the same tasks we have been doing for years.

 

References

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/cloud-computing-a-new-era-of-it-opportunity-and-challenges/261

http://www.techtangerine.com/2009/06/02/ten-reasons-why-cloud-computing-is-a-bad-idea/