A Cloud Computing Glossary! How Handy.
For clarification on any terminology come across thus far, (SaaS, Virtualization, etc), I will refer you to this handy glossary of definitions in relation to cloud computing. Actually, read from top to bottom, it’s pretty informative, but by no means is it a full resource of information.
Interesting tidbit from the glossary: “The World Wide Web is the largest abstraction layer in IT — hiding the complexity of a global network with hundreds of thousands of specialized servers and arcane data behind search engines and hotlinks” I don’t want to be jumping too far all over the place, but this definitely gets at some conversations we’ve had in various classes about the power of the internet and how most users don’t even know how it works, let alone that it isn’t some form of magic. Anyway, back to the cloud!
So, in a previous post I discussed the notion of public vs private clouds with the analogy of owning one’s own home versus renting an apartment in a high-rise building. There are of course advantages to both situations, but the overall perspective is that owning ones own home is more preferred, due to perceptions of privacy, security, and control. However, there is much to be said about an apartment situation where one shares common resources, maintenance costs are covered by the property management, and access and flexibility are greater than that of a private home in the suburbs. I don’t know why I like this analogy so much, but I feel like it is an apt model for describing the advantages of public vs private clouds, or more accurately, multiple-tenant versus single-owner models.
The cost advantages to not having to pay for your own infrastructure, flexibility/scalability on demand, and not having to maintain your own IT staff are highly attractive, and will continue to crop up as a benefit. However, a con to cloud computing that keeps cropping up aside from security concerns is the issue of “virtualization”. According to the handy-dandy glossary article:
Virtualization — as well as the cloud computing model within which it often runs — answer much of that need, by giving CIOs the ability to cover a week-long spike in demand by turning up the spigot on the computing power a business unit gets. A layer of virtualization software allows a bank of servers to share the available workload, and lets the CIO give a business unit 10% more storage capacity or compute power, rather than having to go buy completely new servers that add 10 times the required capacity. The mainframe-like miracle is abstraction — the ability to hide the complexities of a system from the end user while providing all the power and capabilities the user requires.On page 2, under the “drawbacks” of cloud-computing, an analyst states:
“We say about virtualization that it’s hard to manage an environment where your applications are playing hide and seek and your hardware is lying to you,” Laliberte says. “It’s even more with clouds. You’re having to try to manage someone else’s hardware that’s lying to you.”
From a technical perspective, virtualization is a very complicated matter, I’m sure. However, the issue seems to be that of the technology just simply not being mature enough yet. With a few more generations, there really doesn’t appear to be any major obstacle to cloud-computing to being the dominant IT infrastructure for the majority of corporations and government offices. It is, if anything, the change from the rural model of society to the population shift to cities and urban areas.
I know I keep drawing parallels between rural/suburban and urban/metropolitan living situations and the shift to cloud-computing, but the fact is that it is a better use of resources (both energy/eco as well as financial) for many companies, the same way that many see urban living to be. Of course, city/urban areas are known for increased crime due to population density, but this is something that can be mitigated by security standards and development. And as far as the commercial end-user, I don’t see why most anyone would need massive personal storage ever again once the cloud system has had the time to fully mature. Personal storage will be solely for personal copies of files to keep in safe-deposit boxes, much the same way that many conduct their financial transactions mainly through the internet. This post got kind of randomly rambly, and I apologize for that.