The cloud may not be as inevitable as some think
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| caitlyn Nov 14, 2009 12:12 PM EDT |
First, Carla, excellent article. Very well said. The one point, part of your introduction, that I don't quite agree with is: Quoting:As much as we warn about privacy, security, and reliability problems in cloud computing, it's coming and we can't stop it. I remember similar things said about "network computing" (remember Larry Ellison's predictions, anyone?) or "thin client computing". Those were both earlier versions of cloud computing that the business and the general public rejected. So now we have "cloud computing", which is just marketing-speak for the same old client/server model. It's really centralized computing, a return to the old mainframe model. The same issues you raise were all raised with the previous iterations of the cloud. Those issues helped spur rejection of the model but there is another issue which nobody is talking about: cost. Cloud computing doesn't save anyone money and actually raises costs because of the subscription fees involved. The benefits simply aren't good enough to outweigh the costs. We may not have to stop cloud computing. Market forces may very well stop it for us. In the meanwhile, articles like this one which raise alarm bells may help people to think twice about trusting their data to others. |
| techiem2 Nov 14, 2009 2:20 PM EDT |
As long as there are gamers, there will be standalone machines. I'm sure some hardcore FPS/MMO gamer would just LOVE having the 20GB of their game data stored on some server somewhere where they have to retrieve those multi-MB textures/videos/sounds to display on their machine in addition to all the communications between them and the game server. Killer Lag? You betcha. |
| vainrveenr Nov 16, 2009 4:20 PM EDT |
Quoting:We may not have to stop cloud computing. Market forces may very well stop it for us. In the meanwhile, articles like this one which raise alarm bells may help people to think twice about trusting their data to others.Similar market-force sentiments are expressed in the LXer thread 'Not going away, but will it be big?', http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/29958/ : Quoting:Even if [cloud] data formats are open and data is "commandable", I don't think SaaS is completely safe. There is a cost associated with storing large amounts of data. There is a tipping point at which it becomes painful and costly to move data around. If you only have 25 text documents, it isn't a problem moving them around. If you have over 250 gigabytes of data, it becomes troublesome to move it to a new location. How long would it take, copying that around over the Internet?This itself was a comment concerning Open-Xchange CEO Rafael Laguna's thoughts about cloud services in the written piece 'Unlocking the Cloud Means Open Data' found at http://ostatic.com/blog/unlocking-the-cloud-means-open-data Although Laguna in his OStatic piece makes as noteworthy cautions as does Schroder in her Linux Today piece, Laguna may also be overlooking significant issues of market-forces and the related "painful" cost(s) of storing and moving large amounts of data: Quoting:I'm sure some hardcore FPS/MMO gamer would just LOVE having the 20GB of their game data stored on some server somewhere where they have to retrieve those multi-MB textures/videos/sounds to display on their machine in addition to all the communications between them and the game server. Killer Lag? You betcha.Costs indeed! |
| Steven_Rosenber Nov 16, 2009 7:44 PM EDT |
I still think cloud = inevitable ... |
| flufferbeer Nov 16, 2009 8:16 PM EDT |
> I still think cloud = inevitable ... ... and inevitable as well, there's a Sidekicked sucker born every minute. 2c |
| caitlyn Nov 16, 2009 8:46 PM EDT |
@Steven: We'll just have to agree to disagree and see how things play out. In the meanwhile I appreciate Carla's article and I'll probably write about the dangers of the "cloud" in future articles. |
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