The "cloud computing" is surely at its peak of hype cycle. Any words related to cloud - cloudable, cloudish, cloudware, cloudify etc etc are already taken! The term "cloud" definitely has a lightning power now.
Apart from the hype, what exactly does the "cloud" promise? In a sense, a variety of cloud applications are already here - email, google apps, web hosting, online tax filing etc. This trend will continue until most of the consumer applications migrate to the cloud and offered as a service. However, it is not going to be a completely smooth ride. It is one thing that people use free applications like email and google apps but a different ballgame uploading their sensitive personal information to a remote service. The online tax filing would be a litmus test to see how far the concept of cloud could be stretched.
With the recent denial of service attacks on Twitter, and Facebook everyone should be worried about the security and reliability of the cloud based application. Our lives are more and more information powered and there could be huge disruption if these information sources are taken down. Even in a industrialized society like USA, we do see occasional grid failures. Remember, electricity is a 100 year old technology.
My guess is that cloud will not be reliable or secure enough for many more years to completely delegate our computing and data needs. Nicholas Carr in his book, "The Big Switch" do make an argument that computing will be like electricity that is delivered as a service. His point is valid but I think it is a very long term view. Although there are similarities, computing and electricity have fundamental differences. We could have a fairly reliable web server running from our home for less than $1000 that is not true for generating electricity. Computing is infinitely customizable but electricity is not.
Rather than a "Big Switch", we would see a gradual migration of computing to the cloud. This will be especially true for Enterprise where they have already made huge investment in IT infrastructure. A lot of startup and small companies would embrace cloud but it is doubtful if that would be sufficient to achieve economies of scale for the "cloud providers". Enterprises should plan their IT infrastructure to make it compatible with cloud based technologies but should be diligent not to get carried away by the hype.
Apart from the hype, what exactly does the "cloud" promise? In a sense, a variety of cloud applications are already here - email, google apps, web hosting, online tax filing etc. This trend will continue until most of the consumer applications migrate to the cloud and offered as a service. However, it is not going to be a completely smooth ride. It is one thing that people use free applications like email and google apps but a different ballgame uploading their sensitive personal information to a remote service. The online tax filing would be a litmus test to see how far the concept of cloud could be stretched.
With the recent denial of service attacks on Twitter, and Facebook everyone should be worried about the security and reliability of the cloud based application. Our lives are more and more information powered and there could be huge disruption if these information sources are taken down. Even in a industrialized society like USA, we do see occasional grid failures. Remember, electricity is a 100 year old technology.
My guess is that cloud will not be reliable or secure enough for many more years to completely delegate our computing and data needs. Nicholas Carr in his book, "The Big Switch" do make an argument that computing will be like electricity that is delivered as a service. His point is valid but I think it is a very long term view. Although there are similarities, computing and electricity have fundamental differences. We could have a fairly reliable web server running from our home for less than $1000 that is not true for generating electricity. Computing is infinitely customizable but electricity is not.
Rather than a "Big Switch", we would see a gradual migration of computing to the cloud. This will be especially true for Enterprise where they have already made huge investment in IT infrastructure. A lot of startup and small companies would embrace cloud but it is doubtful if that would be sufficient to achieve economies of scale for the "cloud providers". Enterprises should plan their IT infrastructure to make it compatible with cloud based technologies but should be diligent not to get carried away by the hype.
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