Just a blog: I Am All for the Cloud, But Let’s Not Make It A Buzz Word

Friday, 4 June 2010

I Am All for the Cloud, But Let’s Not Make It A Buzz Word - DailyBlogTips

I Am All for the Cloud, But Let’s Not Make It A Buzz Word

Posted: 03 Jun 2010 04:16 PM PDT

You probably already heard about “the cloud,” right? The cloud is nothing more than the Internet, and cloud-computing is Internet-based computing. Under a cloud-computing model, the resources, software and information will be provided to your personal computer on-demand, via the Internet. Instead of running Word or Excel as desktop applications, for example, you would use Google Docs to create and edit your documents.

Some people believe that could-computing is the future, and that is will revolutionize many segments. Others are more skeptical about it, saying that problems might arise if cloud-computing becomes the standard (e.g., security problems, bandwidth bottlenecks and so on).

I sit with the pro-cloud camp. In fact many applications you use today are already examples of cloud-computing (e.g., Gmail, Google Docs, Amazon S3, Meebo).

That being said, I believe that some people are using the “cloud” term out of context. For example, many hosting companies started offering “Cloud Hosting” services. I mean, any kind of web hosting you purchase will already be in the cloud, since it will be accessible remotely from any computer. The only non-cloud kind of hosting I can imagine is if you decide to create a web server in your basement!

By reading the sales page of those companies you conclude that the main characteristic of “cloud hosting” is that you start with a basic configuration, and then you can scale it up as necessary. Well, if I am not wrong this feature has been available for years, and it is called “grid hosting.”

In fact here is the description of the “grid hosting” service offered by a popular company:

Easily handle traffic spikes with the power of hundreds of servers behind your site.

And here is the description of the “cloud hosting” service provided by another popular company:

If your site or application has big fluctuations in traffic or computing power needs – seasonal spikes around the holidays, for example – you can easily add more Cloud Servers, and then remove them once the demand subsides.

Hmm. Seems like the same thing to me. Sure, “cloud hosting” is a cooler term, but I am not sure how many innovations are actually behind it.

Anyway what do you guys think? Do you believe some people/companies are over-hyping the “cloud” concept and trying to profit from it?

Original Post: I Am All for the Cloud, But Let’s Not Make It A Buzz Word