Comments on: Is cloud computing stable in bad weather? http://www.bitcurrent.com/is-cloud-computing-stable-in-bad-weather/ Just another WordPress site Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:52:22 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Ian Rae http://www.bitcurrent.com/is-cloud-computing-stable-in-bad-weather/#comment-540 Ian Rae Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:22:51 +0000 http://www.bitcurrent.com/?p=329#comment-540 My principal point was that network effects could affect large, relatively open clouds. This wasn't intended to burst any bubbles as I'm a huge fan of cloud computing and both my business and customers rely heavily on it! Rather this post is an observation that the behavior of complex and interconnected systems is at odds with predictable performance, availability and scalability. To switch to the "private cloud" question, this may a semantic disagreement, but I also believe that such on-demand utility computing is as useful in the enterprise data center as on the public "internets." Hence the concept of a private cloud where I have my physical resources dedicated to a specially authorized group of users (i.e. my customers, who have some requirements not met by AWS) with a much more tightly controlled cloud architecture, allowing on demand computing, pay-per-use billing to various departments, granular SLA monitoring, etc.. As previously written here, we will likely see different cloud computing ecosystems, with vertically targeted clouds (i.e. "genome analysis cloud" or a HIPAA cloud) that are architected for specific workloads. And I think some will require private control (data sensitivity...or SLA requirements etc..) while benefiting from the same flexible technology as public clouds. To think that publicly available cloud computing will solve every computing requirement would be naive. The hybrid model of public-private cloud computing is very interesting for certain kinds of applications (www.smugmug.com did a great implementation here from what I understand) but not very practical for most at this point. Certainly one of the top requests I get from customers these days is how to take advantage of the "promise" of virtually unlimited scalability, so they don't have to over-provision internally. Its a nice theory but the world get real very fast when you set about running things this way. My principal point was that network effects could affect large, relatively open clouds. This wasn’t intended to burst any bubbles as I’m a huge fan of cloud computing and both my business and customers rely heavily on it! Rather this post is an observation that the behavior of complex and interconnected systems is at odds with predictable performance, availability and scalability.

To switch to the “private cloud” question, this may a semantic disagreement, but I also believe that such on-demand utility computing is as useful in the enterprise data center as on the public “internets.” Hence the concept of a private cloud where I have my physical resources dedicated to a specially authorized group of users (i.e. my customers, who have some requirements not met by AWS) with a much more tightly controlled cloud architecture, allowing on demand computing, pay-per-use billing to various departments, granular SLA monitoring, etc..

As previously written here, we will likely see different cloud computing ecosystems, with vertically targeted clouds (i.e. “genome analysis cloud” or a HIPAA cloud) that are architected for specific workloads. And I think some will require private control (data sensitivity…or SLA requirements etc..) while benefiting from the same flexible technology as public clouds. To think that publicly available cloud computing will solve every computing requirement would be naive.

The hybrid model of public-private cloud computing is very interesting for certain kinds of applications (www.smugmug.com did a great implementation here from what I understand) but not very practical for most at this point. Certainly one of the top requests I get from customers these days is how to take advantage of the “promise” of virtually unlimited scalability, so they don’t have to over-provision internally. Its a nice theory but the world get real very fast when you set about running things this way.

]]> By: Reuven Cohen, CTO Enomaly Inc http://www.bitcurrent.com/is-cloud-computing-stable-in-bad-weather/#comment-539 Reuven Cohen, CTO Enomaly Inc Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:05:06 +0000 http://www.bitcurrent.com/?p=329#comment-539 ian, your post reads like the doom and gloom forecasts we saw about cloud computing back in 2007. Cloud computing is as much about trust as it is about efficiency. The real question you should be asking is do I trust microsoft, amazon or even AT&T to mange my infrastructure better then an internal data center team, and in my rather bias opinion the answer for the most part is yes. Also, about your comment on outages, the question isn't will the cloud provider go down, because it certainly will. The real question is how do I enable a hybrid cloud environment that assumes failure and can do so gracefully. (This one of my main motivators for a unified cloud interface standard) Lastly, as some one who has built a business on the so called private cloud platform. The idea of a quarantined shared internal cloud, aka private cloud is an oxymoron. Cloud computing is about using resources where ever and when ever, internally or externally. ian, your post reads like the doom and gloom forecasts we saw about cloud computing back in 2007. Cloud computing is as much about trust as it is about efficiency. The real question you should be asking is do I trust microsoft, amazon or even AT&T to mange my infrastructure better then an internal data center team, and in my rather bias opinion the answer for the most part is yes.

Also, about your comment on outages, the question isn’t will the cloud provider go down, because it certainly will. The real question is how do I enable a hybrid cloud environment that assumes failure and can do so gracefully. (This one of my main motivators for a unified cloud interface standard)

Lastly, as some one who has built a business on the so called private cloud platform. The idea of a quarantined shared internal cloud, aka private cloud is an oxymoron. Cloud computing is about using resources where ever and when ever, internally or externally.

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