Cloud computing??

[SauvignonBlanche]

Can anyone define / explain please?

Instead of having a "proper" machine in your office you use "computers" and software that are based out on the internet somewhere.

So you might have your company email held and running out there in the "cloud".

The "computer" you access will probably not be a "real" computer but instead a "virtual" machine that is actually run by some other real machine somewhere that's also running lots of other peoples things. You don't know where the machine that really is running your machine is, it could be anywhere and it might well change during a day as companies move their processing power around.

Sometimes if your "computer" is running low on something more of what it needs magically appears and the machine can keep on growing.

This sort of thing is also often coupled with flexible pricing arrangements. For example a company might rent an email service or database from someone.

Pretty vague, but Cloud Computing covers all sorts of areas.

Basically, as BadgersPaws said, instead of saving your data to your local PC hard drive, you save it to somewhere on the internet. E.g Dropbox, MSN have one also.

Although it's the future, it's using the same ideas as computers did when they first came out and everything was saved on a mainframe.

Well it's not just where the data is saved but where the data is processed.

But yes it is a lot like heading "back" to the mainframe days, albeit with serious bells and whistles.

There are, of course, come concerns which have been mentioned in the computing press, because once you are renting processing power (and storage) from a third party, you no longer have complete control over the functioning of your service.

Also, unless you can take regular backups, you won't have all the data available if that third party suddenly goes down (either financially or equipment-wise).

Since it is a new area, and can get quite costly as the number of servers in use grows, it isn't the sort of thing where one is very likely to be able to run a test on a backup / alternate service, without the risk of a live test with all customers / visitors being shifted to load the backup cloud service.

I suppose it might be possible for a few major competitors to get a 'cloud computing club' going and provide a way for customers to use one and have a second as a backup. Unfortunately it might be accused of being a cartel as they would pretty much need to have the same charges else one would get all the 'master server' business and others would be only able to get 'backup business'.

With a Cloud based service you shouldn't need a backup service. It "should" be resilient and behind the scenes the physical tin that you're actually running on is likely to be constantly changing anyway. That will happen when a machine does fail or someone like Google decide to shut down the servers in a warm country and turn on the ones in a cooler climate so they can save on the air con bill.

So you don't need a backup to cover resilience.

And for the same reason you shouldn't need a second company as a backup, and the flavours of "cloud" that are on offer are substantially different anyway making such a thing pretty much impossible.

But having to trust in that one company to maintain your systems 24:7 is a big Achilles heel. However the balance comes in that you "should" be able to trust them more than you trust your own in house ITs ability to maintain such high availability.

However it's worth pointing out that you should still be doing backups to cover data becoming corrupted by bad processing. If someone went onto your database yesterday morning and wiped out all your accounts then that's not a resilience issue.

And to throw and extra problem onto the table you've also got the data security concerns. When your data is out of the EU how do you make sure that it's being handled according to EU law and not being sold to advertisers or taken at will by foreign Governments. We're meant to have deals with the US to guard against this, but many companies that say they are compliant aren't.

There are obvious security concerns too, as the average user doesn't know where say Google or MSN will be saving their data and who will be able to access it.

As already advised really.

I spend my days having discussions about this and other fascinating technologies. It's no wonder I sneak on here as often as possible

Sorry, didn't realise the link was quite so narrow when I posted. Assumed (wrongly) it would take you to a more detailed and more interesting BT analysis thingy I was using the other day but can't find on public site.

Belle, if you don't mind me asking, what do you think the possibilities are for using cloud computing for small businesses?

A small business could use Cloud Based email or office applications quite easily (e.g the Google Applications).

I think that going Cloud is in some way easier for small companies where's there's not the capability or desire to handle things like backups, high availability and DR.

It's in bigger companies where the is already the capability and resource capable of doing those things that the Cloud looks like a bit of a shakier proposition.

And it's that latter position that I find myself in.

This is the latest hot new investment topic in the invetsment world where 'Cloud' based technology firms are being touted as the future of computing with old fashioned hardware and software companies desperate to take over 'Cloud' firms to get hold of the technology. The recent bidding war between Hewlett Packard and Dell for 3PAR being an example.

Frankly it ddoes sound like going back to old mainframes as *BadgersPaws says. If I were running a firm the biggest worry I would have is that if my internet connection went down I would have no computing power at all in the building as every bit of data or processing power has to come into the building via the internet. It also makes you entirely dependent on one firm for all your software and hardware needs and switching to a new supplier will be very difficult as many firms find out when they outsorce essential services.

Me and DW absolutely rely on our computers to do what we do and having had the experience of so called service providers in the form of ISPs for the last 15 years we dont trust anyone to provide a 99.9999% reliable service except the national grid that supplies the elecric to power our computers and even then we have battery backup.

"'Cloud' based technology firms are being touted as the future of computing"

From the point of view of the Software firms the big advantage of Cloud is that it allows for Software as a Service and with that comes interesting forms of billing for their software. If they can shift to what is basically a form of rental then they get a permanent and predictable revenue stream rather than the occasional large purchases of "physical" product or licenses.

"Frankly it ddoes sound like going back to old mainframes as BadgersPaws says"

Well a bit, but the scalability is a big plus. If you've got a process that has a massive peak once a month and you run that process on hardware in house then you have to buy hardware capable of dealing with that peak. So 95% of your time you might be using 5% of your power.

If you "rent" your processing power then when you need that huge leap in capabilities you just get it and pay for it for only that period of time when it's required.

And that flexibility isn't possible if you've got a mainframe of your own.

"If I were running a firm the biggest worry I would have is that if my internet connection went down I would have no computing power at all in the building as every bit of data or processing power has to come into the building via the internet."

For bigger firms this is again probably less of a worry than for smaller firms.

If my company lost it's net connection we would have all sorts of problems regardless of where our software runs. To avoid that we have multiple ways of getting out to the Internet. So given as how we have to do that anyway that, for us, is not a new dependency that Cloud introduces.

For a smaller company with a reliance on perhaps a single ISP and broadband line then there might well be some additional worries.

"It also makes you entirely dependent on one firm for all your software and hardware needs and switching to a new supplier will be very difficult as many firms find out when they outsorce essential services."

Again that's probably a difference for bigger and smaller companies.

For bigger companies the work involved in moving from one supplier to another can be immense and complex and it's not substantially different if those suppliers are using physical boxes somewhere on your site or virtual machines out in the Cloud.

For smaller companies who are used to the agility of having, for example, their DOC files somewhere local to them and who can change software providers as easily as nipping down to PC World then it's going to be trickier.

TechLovingDad I think BadgersPaws and BeenBeta have given you the full picture - sorry, I didn't see your message until now.

I tend to the view that cloud computing is probably better/easier for smaller companies. I worked, until last week, with an enormous UK company as my single client and the move to cloud would be a nightmare for them and also means ditching the considerable investment they've already made in their infrastructure, etc, etc. That doesn't mean they're not considering it but it'll be a long time before it happens (if it ever does).

If you are interested I'll check that the stuff I was looking at is in the public domain and CAT it to you. I think it is but just haven't needed to look at it for a couple of weeks.

If it's on an external website I can just post a link, of course.

"I tend to the view that cloud computing is probably better/easier for smaller company"

It can cut both ways.

Smaller companies can move software providers more easily, but often suffer from a vulnerable net connection.

Big companies often have solid network connections but are more rigid and locked into their software.

In my big company the Cloud projects I've seen have been stuff that either nibbles around the edges, such as email for one area when email was going to be replaced anyway, or something new, such as a new CRM system.

It doesn't have to be all Cloud or all no Cloud and I think it will vary for a long time depending on the business area on a case by case basis.