Cloud Blog

All about that big computer in the sky.

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Want to get a big picture of the State of the Cloud today? Check out this infographic from The Atlantic.

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Cloud Gadgets: When Marketing Hype Takes Over

In a move reminiscent of ye olde netbook computer, in an effort to boost what would otherwise be considered products that are dead on arrival in the wake of the popularity of things as diverse as Amazon's AWS, cloud hosting or the iPad, new products are being touted as things made for or very suitable for accessing the Cloud.

These are mostly hype-requiring devices but do serve the promise of the Cloud, a dream as old as the Internet itself: to be able to do stuff wherever you are, as conveniently and widely available as possible.

Google's Chromebooks, Samsung Series 5 Chromebooks, and  Acer's Chromia, for example, offer the long-forgotten dream of a web-made machine. While the jury's still out on their success in being offered as Cloud machines, they do have the benefit of being hedged as useful tools for corporate IT departments.

Then there are today's other hot items: iPads-- i mean, tablets. The jury's still out on this one although you'd be forgiven to believe Apple's iPad rules this and many succeeding rounds to come. Everyone from no-name Chinese contractors to big names like RIM (Playbook), Motorola (Xoom) and Samsung (Galaxy Tab) have an Android-based tablet offering; while other big names like Microsoft, Nokia and HP moving mountains for their own Windows or proprietary offerings.  However, if you are a new entrant (like say, Panasonic?), how can you differentiate yourself from this sea of already large players?  Why, you offer a "cloud" tablet of course!

 Panasonic offers Viera "cloud tablets" to do what you think it does, tantamount to saying Toyota is offering road-based automobiles. But don't let that stop them.

On the other hand, iTwin offers a dto-peer networking over the Net between the two connected PCs to share files.  If this sounds really old to you, it is. In iTwin's case, its devices create a "personal cloud' around a user's PC hard disk, forever throwing cold water on the very essence of cloud computing itself because in today's cloud-intoxicated world.

The Cloud as a concept is relatively new, considering its heritage (virtualization, load-balanced elastic services, etc.) is quite an old concept and actually varies in definition, with most of them failing to realize its real vision of being an amorphous, abstract concept intended to let organizations and people do things with an abstract concept instead of a wide array of specific equipment, sills and methodologies; and then access and do things with it no matter where they are and regardless of device to access them.

But as with any new concept that gathers wide appeal and buzz, especially something with a deep potential for the future like the use of the Cloud, the seedier side also exists, and in the case of the Cloud, it isn't just the security and other dangers that need addressing, but also having to swallow and live with the fact that there will always be those in marketing who will slap the name of the fashion item du jour if it helps put their names out there, let alone help sell their product in an ocean of similar ones.

As the examples above and many more besides provide, slapping the cloud as part of your product's moniker or marketing spiel definitely does wonders.

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When 15-year-old-kids start making news about their companies, you know an industry has arrived.

Daniil Kulchenko just sold his private cloud company to ActiveState to allow the latter a significant boost in its entry into cloud computing (whatever it ultimately attempts to do with that). 

He commits to work with the acquiring company only in a part-time capacity because he's er, still finishing high school.

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Cloud computing for business currently favors small workloads, where a lot of smaller transactions are more efficiently done in the Cloud, while larger, more intensive applications remain (for now) in the domain of in-house IT infrastructure.

That's no surprise, but such is usually the case for something relatively new in achieving mainstream adoption. And the same concepts turn out to mature to be the best sources for overall functions, so that not  long from now, "in-house" will eventually, inexorably, give way to having things done in the Cloud.

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So now even the government is joining the bandwagon.

That can only be a good thing as far as Cloud (as a concept of content storage and access) adoption is concerned. But the technology sector always comes up with ways to let any organization do away with the old stuff so it can feed in the latest concept du jour. Cloud Computing does seem like "it's different this time," just like the Internet itself before it; but ultimately, it's just the same upgrade cycle.

While the jury's still out on how much IT has made a large positive impact on your life in the way you interact with the government, particularly when it's just keeping pace withe the rest of the world, one thing's for sure: people working in the government can sure use every help it can get its hands on.

And when it comes to certain aspects of migrating technologies to cloud computing, these things aren't simply condensation but real money, to the tune of almost $4 million for one agancy, the NOAA, migrating its 25,000 e-mail inboxes to a cloud-based solution.

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Cool Cloud Services at Cloud Expo '11 -- including, among others, Spoon, that lets "users easily run applications from the cloud with zero-install."

See the slideshow from PCMag here.

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Gaikai and OnLive are among the better known of cloud gaming specialists, ahead of their time not long ago but now getting more than validation that their concept was good to begin with, in the form of the (old-school and big software-based gaming-) competition having just taken notice due to the recent onrush of buzz surrounding the Cloud (thanks, Steve Jobs!), and are looking at entering the fray.

Crytek, makers of the spellbinding Crysis franchise (and the CryEngine er, game engines) have started to make serious comments about the Cloud. Crysis 2 is especially computer-intensive and amazing in its visuals (the graphics include not-before-seen global illumination in games; vertical gameplay and much more) but not necessarily built for the Cloud.

Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli even goes on to say that "Crysis 2 isn't built to be scaled on a cloud. Crysis 2 is not a cloud game. Crysis 2 is a client-based game that is running on a cloud..." which could give the likes of Gaikai and OnLive a sigh of relief... until you realize that on the same breath he also said that while he has concerns with the way cloud gaming is approached in its current incarnation, he also notes: "but I think cloud gaming is the future, inevitably."

Click the title link to read the rest of the story.

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OK, so  you finally decided to look more into this cloud computing business... where exactly do you start?

AllBusiness just knew you'd as that, and has an answer.

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Is The Cloud the New Electric Grid?

Time was, companies jostled for position and advantage for the product offerings they provided. Businesses would collectively spend many billions on IT hardware and connectivity. Consumers on the other hand, would fiddle with the latest gigahertz and terabyte that can be squeezed from their rigs.

With the advent of the Consumer Cloud, enforced by the latest torrent of devices like smartphones and tablets that practically abstracts individual computing components into an amorphous mass that didn't demand the fastest or most powerful machines, but rather just allow you to store, play, retrieve, interact and do anything in the most convenient and user-friendly way possible.  

If you're able to do it in a cool gadget (like the latest smartphone, gadget or network) then so much the better; but not necessary, so long as you don't  have to worry about the itnricacies of configuration and just store your stuff in the big computer in the sky.

In this way, the Internet finally reaches its true promise of not just ubiquity, but being accessible anywhere in (for the most part) the easiest way, that it takes a more integral part of our lives every day yet so prevalent that it becomes invisible. 

Like electricity, we can finally enjoy its benefits, knowing it's "there," so much so that we can practically ignore it, mostly remembering it when it goes down or undergoes a glitch.

Unlike electricity, gas, phone and such utilities, which is mostly invisible because it is relegated to a few utility companies you just pay for every month, they enable the use of everything we need.

The Cloud however, like cable before and with it, is a springboard for fun and exciting stuff. Stuff like your social network, your tweets, interacting with friends, getting the latest info on stuff you like, conveniently buying things, accessing information, all the way to playing games that are so much fun entire families get destroyed (as in the case of Warcraft and pre-modern-Cloud MMO games), and everything else. Stuff you don't just need, but for the most part want.

So while Cloud Computing has been around for a long time, like the Internet and its being a new incarnation of "online," this year marks the time when the Cloud really hits the masses and becomes accessible everywhere and achieves scale and ubiquity that not only will we be unable to ignore it, but for better or worse, we'll also actually ignore it at the same time. And that can't be a bad thing.

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The Cloud is supposed to be a kind of abstraction where you store and do stuff and live your life without having to fiddle with hardware, configuration, setups, software and the like. Instead, you're supposed to just put it in the big virtual computer in the sky the goes with you wherever you go.

Still, even magical things have method behind them, and for cloud computing, data centers, real servers and people make them happen.

Here's a glimpse of how one data center that provides cloud services looks like from the inside.

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A quick primer about the Cloud.

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When the likes of Disney start talking about the advantages of the Cloud, you know the concept is IN prmetime.

Let's hope this one's magic lasts a long time.

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See, it isn't just music, photos, documents and stuff that can be accessed in the cloud.

Soon, not just your smartphone but your microwave oven, dishwasher, fax and your cooling system will be managed in the Cloud.

OnLive however, is onto the more exciting and fun stuff. Its cloud-based gaming system is all the rage, where they intend to tip the  model of traditional software and gaming (read: packageware you purchase one at a time, put into a drive and so on), and turn gaming into a Cloud-based regime.

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Used to be, elastic compute clouds remained in the arcane halls of the enterprise.  Not anymore, as the Cloud really takes the world by storm.

Ever wanted the lowdown on how it got that way?  Check this primer.

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So Apple's announcement of its iCloud excited everybody, as usual.

But not everyone is rejoicing. Developing countries like India fall into the ironic syndrome of a developing country in dire need of having good access to technology yet is among the least able to.

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Long live the tablet in the Cloud.

Every few years or so since the 1980's, people like to play that game of predicting how that year is the definitive date when the PC is finally dead. MSNBC has such a hit piece, and they're not the only one.

Yet it only continues to grow.

Sure, everyone's currently in love with their smartphones and tablet devices (which are basically PCs with a new form factor and a new user interface) and this time may seem like it's "different."

But while the look may change, the PC continues to envelop our lives and the Cloud only serves to make its mark not only pervasive but also permanent.

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The consumer side of cloud computing means not just storing website and corporate data in scalable clustered servers anymore, and more of storing your content and life online, from music to photos to files, personal information, smartphone functions, and everything else.

A natural progression is of course "everything else," where refrigerator content information, grocery lists, home cameras, washing machine control and all sorts of home or business use starts going online to pervade our lives, hopefully for the better.

The only problem is that all that data needs storage, and for all the surge in the demand for storage equipment for use in cloud computing environments, the technology doesn't appear to keep up with the pace.

Already not only are storage providers both enjoying the surge but also unable to cope with the demand and rate of consumption; other adjacent functions are also getting louder in their need to be addressed, including the needed but relatively slow transition to IPv6.

SFGate reports on how the hypergrowth of the "Internet of Things" as they're called, is both a blessing but can also suck the air out of the room and need a rapid thrust towards more modern solutions to address them.