Finbarr McCarthy

Cloud Computing & Social Media (Technologies of The Future)

Posts Tagged Dell

The Future of Cloud Computing

Jun 16

Posted by Finbarr McCarthy in Cloud Computing, Future Web | 1 Comment

I have seen a good deal of commentary lately on cloud computing where people (who should be “in the know”) have put forward opinions that cloud computing is hosting by another name.

To put the record straight, yes you can use cloud computing as an alternative means of traditional server or website hosting, but it is so much more than that.  Unlike traditional hosting arrangements cloud computing offers many different layers and opportunities right now, and many new layers and opportunities are either just unfolding or yet to be discovered.

We are all familiar with SaaS (Software as a Service).  Well Cloud Computing readily provides the ability to use the cloud as PaaS (Platform as a Service).  One of the massive benefits of Cloud Computing is the flexible infrastructural platform it provides and the ability to change computing resource from a capital intensive / skills intensive investment into a utility.  Just like your electricity or gas supply, plug in and pay for as much or little as you use.

There are a number of industry heavy-weights investing heavily right now in cloud computing, including Amazon, IBM, Google, HP, Dell, Microsoft & Others.  All of these providers currently have their efforts concentrated on providing standalone public clouds.  Meanwhile VM Ware, and Red Hat are currently offering customers the ability to build private cloud computing platforms.

My view is that cloud computing platforms will soon reach a tipping point where it will no longer be at the cutting edge but instead will be the de-facto mechanism used for providing computing resources.  However, in order for this to happen there is one significant hurdle overcome first, that is, the ability for all the public and private clouds to interconnect seamlessly.  Consider it the “Inter-Cloud”.  For a comparison consider the growth of the internet, firstly there were a bunch of private networks that were not connected to each other, then with the emergence of the internet private networks began to connect to the internet using gateways.  Before too long the emergence and broad adoption of standard protocols (TCP/IP) eliminated the requirement for gateways and everything became connected to everything.  Something similar is inevitable for cloud computing and it is probably going to happen sooner than you think.

One technology to watch here is Red Hats MRG.  MRG stands for Messaging Real-Time Grid and is really a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  With technologies like MRG, Cloud Computing Consultants can now offer clients incredible computing power from existing server and desktop inventory by enabling scheduling to local and remote grids, rented cloud capacity and cycle-stealing from desktop PCs.

This is the start of something big, next time I post I will outline some very specific ideas I have on how these changes not only affect the IT industry but are also going to have a dramatic affect on how the world works.

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Blue Skies For Clouds Computing?

Jun 30

Posted by Finbarr McCarthy in Cloud Computing | No Comments

Increasingly companies are realising the vast potential cloud computing has to offer.  Like many others the New York Times has recently created a new website which gives users a fully searchable archive of all the articles it published between 1851 and 1922, that’s about 13 million articles.

More impressively, it has done this without installing any new servers or bandwidth.

How did they do this? Simple! They used Amazons cloud computing service offering.

Cloud computing is one of the most promising new uses of technology we have seen in a long time.  Just a few years ago if you wanted to do something on the web, you needed to go out and buy servers, software, etc - get it all connected to the internet and then start worrying about your project.

With the advent of Web 2.0 and the usage of “The Network as a Platform” this has all changed.  Cloud computing has the nice advantage of having software, hardware and bandwidth as a pay as you go service.

Many organisations are now looking at cloud computing and realising that it makes a lot of sense, instead of having to dedicate precious resources keeping their own data centres running they can opt to pay someone like Amazon, Google, Microsoft or Dell a modest fee to worry about keeping all the hardware, infrastructure and software running 24/7 for them.

It probably works out a lot greener and less expensive too.  Traditionally companies scaled their data centers and bandwidth to deal with their busiest periods.  This often meant way over specified connections and processing power that was well under utilised 95% or more of the time.  As we all know, servers running waiting for someone to use them cost us all a lot in terms of money and carbon footprint.

Google has been a big proponent of this technology, providing services like GMail, and it Google Apps which provide email, calendar, word processing, spreadsheets and storage to any web connect device - no software required.

Since Google launched it enterprise apps in early 2007 it has already in excess of half a million subscribers using the service.  Microsoft has just followed suit launching “Office Live” and Microsoft On-Line.

These are excellent tools for individuals and small businesses who don’t want to invest in all the software, servers and data centers typically required to run simple tasks like email and word processing.

But what about larger enterprises? It is true that there is some resistance to implementing these services, however, take Coca Cola for example; It has recently signed a deal with Microsoft that will effectively move all it email and documents off its own network and onto Microsoft Live.

There are some concerns about security and data sensitivity, after all if you embrace cloud computing you do need to trust the company providing you with this service and ultimately that is going to be an individual call for each company.

Trust me, this is one of the biggest developments since the sliced pan.

www.amazon.com/aws

www.google.com/apps

http://www.officelive.com/

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