"A cloud is just a grid with a business model"
Dan Drollette
Thursday, 08 October 2009 15:10 UTC
Someone who shall remain anonymous summed up cloud computing in one sentence: “A cloud is just a grid with a business model.”
A pithy description that seems a bit extreme, but . . . could be true.
What do you think?
Updated 09 October 2009 09:24 UTC
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Replies
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Anonymous
By coincidence, the cover of the latest issue of The Economist is on cloud computing. (only in print form)
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Anonymous – can you give us a summary of what the Economist is saying about the cloud?
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Yes, anonymous, please do.
I, myself, didn’t see the story. But I plan to!
On a related note, someone from the office overheard the following two comments about cloud computing:
“A cloud is a bit like getting water piped to your home, but paying by the drink, not the bottleful.”
Or how about this comment?
“(With a cloud,)there’s no need to ‘boil the ocean;’ even big companies can put a toe in the water with email or customer relations management tools, before casting a whole data center into the drink.”
More is posted at GridCast
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So, I picked up a free copy of The Economist at the gym last night, and had a chance to read it. Essentially, they’re saying that there is a race among Google, Apple and Microsoft to dominate the consumer market for cloud computing — which the authors define as just about any kind of web application (as opposed to software you buy in a shrink-wrapped box and install, or hardware that you physically own and operate).
The article then goes into the strengths and weaknesses of each company’s approach, based upon each company’s past history.
The story is not really about large institutions swapping computing jobs at their data centers, nor is it about renting resources for significant amounts of time.
Reading the piece, the authors’ take on the consumer market for computing seemed a lot like arguments we’d heard back in the mid-1990s, in which you had those on one side preaching for ultra-cheap, “dumb” terminals that hooked up to a then-novel interconnection called “the Internet.” On the other side were those calling for more costly, powerful and independent laptops and PCs, hooked up when and where needed to the ’net.
I kind of wonder if all this isn’t a rehash of those old battles, on some level.
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