Cloud Computing : The Coming Clouds and Storm
Those who live where it snows are all too familiar with the crazed weather forecasting phenomenon. Recently there were reports of 18-36” of snow where I live. Stores were emptied out, gas stations and lines, and everyone hunkered down for what turned out to be a dusting of snow followed by sunny days – no clouds at all. Why do weather forecasters do this? I’ve always assumed it was to generate increased amounts of viewership in order to sell more TV advertising. I wonder if the marketing for cloud computing operates in the same way.
For as long as I can remember, I have used a shared hosting site for my web projects. The company is called site5.com. As of this writing, they are offering web hosting with “unlimited web space, bandwidth, domains, email” for $4.95 per month, with a 30-day free trial. My account on site5.com is similar. I can run any kind of web site, web application, or database. I’ve been online with them for years.
My account access is on a shared Linux box. I can easily add more.
But would anyone call this cloud computing? Many probably would – many consider Hotmail and Salesforce.com to be cloud computing. Some probably wouldn’t – because I can’t auto-provision “instances” of a virtualized computer, and I can see (but not access) the other shared users on the same box.
The bottom line though is that I can quickly provision a virtual server for my use. Suppliers have offered this service since the year 2000 and well before that. But with today’s focus on moving workloads to the cloud, the conversation has shifted toward cost, agility, and resource elasticity.
So why all the hype about cloud computing? Why is it such a big deal that businesses can have access to shared hosting? Yes, modern virtualization and provisioning methods make for a much more robust server. Yes, billing can now truly be performed “per CPU cycle” turning the entire computing rental into a utility model.
Cloud Computing – But will this really make a difference for the majority of people who need shared hosting?
I don’t think so. I do think that a few new business models that have very spike-prone utilization rates such as data analytics and modeling could possibly have access to more CPU at a better cost. But shared hosting for small projects and businesses has been around forever – I don’t see cloud computing creating an entirely new storm of IT demand.
