I hear “cloud computing” being thrown around by a lot of journalists as a buzz term. However, I don’t really understand the technical description. Or at least, if I do understand, I fail to understand the appeal.
Suppose I get a cloud OS (chrome or a variant thereupon). Does that mean that I can’t access my word processor or spreadsheet unless I’m connected to the internet? Can I access my files? I don’t see how that’s a selling point. What’s the upside? Not having to get a hard drive?
Whenever I hear about cloud computing, it always sounds to me like a throwback to the days of mainframes and dumb terminals. Which we ditched as soon as technology made it possible.
The idea is that your data (and maybe the processing power, and maybe the applications themselves) are stored remotely and accessed over the Internet in some presumably secure fashion. It’s a buzzword these days, not everybody uses it the same way: some folks are just talking about remote data storage, others the whole computing model moving from local computers to powerful servers “somewhere.”
The advantages to you (assuming the companies owning the cloud are competent) are that your data is securely backed up, your data is available anywhere, and that your local computer needs are dramatically reduced: effectively all you need on your end is a device capable of running a web browser – you don’t need much computing power and storage of your own. This is a BIG advantage if what your data consists of is multimedia – most people don’t have the hard drive space to store their entire music + movie + TV collection, but many (and soon most) will have the bandwidth to stream them. Plus the cloud provider need only maintain one copy for everybody and stream it as needed, which is very efficient. Other advantages: cost of applications can be distributed over many more users (or even free), and application updates only have to happen on the server.
The disadvantages are the networking one you mentioned (although Internet is pretty reliable these days for most consumers, and very reliable for most businesses). Other disadvantages include security (if you can access it from anywhere, so can anyone else who can break the authentication), competence of the companies (there have been several “oops, we lost all your data” incidents in the last couple of years by companies big enough to know better), DRM nonsense (you can only watch the movie you rented for the next 30 days, and have to finish it within 24 hours of when you started…), cost (we’re going to charge you $8.99 for that movie rental, by the way) and business acceptance (you want me to put my critical business data where?). This last one is what’s killed the efforts in the past (the idea is decades old), and probably why data storage stuff is aimed more at consumers these days.
This is my big concern. I keep word files and powerpoint presentations on my google docs, but that’s as a backup to my jump drive.
So then, without knowing more about Chrome OS, is there reason to believe whether it is cloud lite or cloud heavy? Is there going to be on board software, or is everything going to be wholly internet based?
Another potential disadvantage, depending on what is done off your computer, is if the company in question goes under or discontinues the service, your program is useless. And the fact that they can change or delete the application/data without warning, like Amazon did with some of it’s Kindle e-books a while back. A major reason why I don’t have Kindle.
The thing that REALLY bothers me about cloud computing is that all my sensitive data would be in some servers some where in the world and the hard drive isn’t encrypted. I’m pretty good with my own computer security and encrypt my whole hard drive so that even if someone has physical access to it, they can’t look and see what’s there. With cloud computing, all you need is a curious employee or a big brother government to look at everything you have. It’s a big security issue.
And once cloud computing really takes off, the system will change and you will be faced with subscription fees. Microsoft has already foreshadowed the change with its Office apps. Their desire is to move Office to the cloud so while you won’t have to buy/install it on your machine, you will need internet access to access Office and then pay a monthly, yearly, or even by the piece subscription rate to create and maintain your office productions. Plus, if you store your documents online, you’ll have to pay a fee just to access them.
“We control the vertical. We control the horizontal.” For a fee.
I’ve downloaded Chromium, which is the open-source version of Chrome. Since Chrome is based on Linux, Google had to make an open-source version available for public use and development.
It truly is just a web-browser on top of a barebones kernel, with some preconfigured links to certain services, Google and otherwise. The version I tried was on a Live USB stick and thus was very slow. But I’ve heard from some folks who are testing it out at various companies for corporate use, to access cloud-based services, like Salesforce.com, and Google’s various services (Docs, Gmail, Calendar, Sites, etc.). It’s made a stellar impression on some of those guys.
See that just…i don’t know, it boggles the mind. I understand that we rich western gluttons have internet 99% of the time. But there’s always going to be power outs, or outages in your internet, or times when you want to go to the cabin or on vacation. Even if there was a barebones word processor, and an offline Gmail function, THAT I could function with. I dislike having to be internet dependent for all computing.
I work for a big security company, and we provide certification services to a lot of these providers (SAS 70 Type II, ISO/IEC 27002, etc.). While I’m not an expert on certification and compliance, I know that the reputable cloud-based services like Salesforce.com and Google typically have to pass many different levels of certification, covering all aspects of their security architecture.
Since they may be serving banks, healthcare, publicly traded companies, and governmental organizations, a big cloud provider will be required to comply with all of the multiple regulatory provisions that would cover their individual customers (HIPAA, SOX, PCI, FISMA, etc.). Which doesn’t make them absolutely secure, but probably makes them a hell of a lot more secure than any given company, which would have fewer regulatory requirements.
I’m inclined to agree with you - at home, I do everything with clients: email, word processing, spreadsheets, image editing, etc. I have a ton of media ripped to my very old-school server.
But we’re approaching the day when you literally wouldn’t need to open an application to do anything - there are online photo editors (I’m a huge fan of pixlr), online video editors (JayCut, and Youtube just came out with some basic functionality), streaming all you can eat music (Rhapsody, Pandora, and soon Apple/Lala), in addition to the fairly robust productivity apps out there. Hell, with OnLive, they’ll even have streaming 3D video games.
If and when broadband access and copious online storage becomes ubiquitous - especially if we wind up with a stable WiMAX/4G standard - it will be entirely feasible to do everything from a Chrome OS system (or some competing platform) and never install another piece of software again. And here’s the kicker - it may not look or feel any different than using a computer does today.
Cloud computing at the moment is mostly for businesses, and for the most part if your network is down you are pretty much limited to what you can do anyhow, losing access shared drives and stuff.
I’ve been using what is basically cloud computing at work for a long time, before it was given that name. My usual engine is a thin client connected to various servers over our network. I store all my files on various servers, and can send big computing jobs off to a compute ranch where it gets scheduled.
The benefits:
I need do no backups
I can connect anywhere in my company, and don’t have to drag a laptop into meeting rooms. If I’m giving a presentation, I set it up at my desk, take my smart card, push it in, and there it is. I can do this if I go down the hall or go to Japan.
If my workstation dies, I can swap in a new one, and am less affected than if my cellphone dies.
I don’t have it set up, but lots of people have this setup at home, and can work from home for a few days, go in for a few days, and don’t have to worry about synching.
We have a version of Open Office which can store files on the cloud, so I can go home and work on them without mailing them to myself or ftping them.
I think the big advantage for business is when you need lots of space or computing power at certain times of the year. You don’t have to buy an entire computing center for a few months of work.
As for backups and the like, I trust the computer center staff far more than I trust the average user. We don’t do backups every day - unless we purchase a service that backs our systems up on the web. I’ve been computing this way for nearly ten years, and I’ve never lost a file.
The difference between the cloud and a mainframe is mostly that you are interactive on a cloud, and have a choice of file systems and computing platforms - and that you can get to your stuff anywhere in the world you have an internet connection.
Cloud computing seems to be an abstraction of processing power, applications, and storage. The last being very much like a SAN. However, while these are great ideas, I’m not so sure of the implementation. Farming your IT out to a 3rd party seems very risky. But cloud computing seems a great idea for international companies. IBM might have its own cloud, and IBMers everywhere could connect to it. Similarly HP. But each cloud would be under the control of its respective company.
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[li]If you lose your shit, the technogeeks will not help you. They will giggle at you and make fun of your not understanding the fundamental principles and engineering of client-server models. This is kind of like firemen sitting around giggling at you because you weren’t aware of the inherent lightning-strike danger of improperly bonded CSST.[/li][li]Since the dawn of time, companies have hired people whose entire job is to tell you everything is all right and you can completely trust them and the company is as stable as a rock, and to do so until they, themselves are fired because the company is out of business.[/li][li]You are going to have to sit down and ask yourself some very tough questions because the time where you could get away without asking very tough questions with regard to your online presence and data are gone.[/ul][/li][/quote]
The first point probably needs to be expanded upon: If the system goes down, whether by accident or design, there is nothing any geeks outside the company can do to help you. We’ll be just as powerless as you are; the only difference is, we’ll have seen it coming and have avoided the service in the first place.
This is a great quote about cloud computing from Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle:
There are advantages to the client-server model (aka Cloud Computing). Mobility as Voyager mentioned and automatic backups as others have said. Other advantages are centralized data-security/encryption and sharing/collaboration.
Honestly, it is a matter of time before most consumers keep their docs and media on a cloud service, but there will be some people that will choose to manage it themselves. It’s just cheaper and easier for most people.
It is a lot like email. A few years ago, everyone ran an email client on their machine, they downloaded their email to their computer, managed it, backed it up, moved it to their new computer. Then web mail got a lot better and many people just moved to web mail. You can access all of your emails any time, from any where, and you don’t have to worry about it. Sure, you have to trust your provider, but you always have to trust someone – even if it is yourself. Most people will find that they trust a service provider more than themselves.
BTW: Google docs provided offline access via Google Gears (although that was just disabled in May). I would expect Chrome OS will have this ability.
Although I see no advantage to me of cloud computing and disadvantages (who owns my stuff anyway?), there is one kind I find quite convenient–and so far free: Dropbox. I regularly use three computers (my home laptop, my office desktop, and my travel netbook. Once I put a file into the dropbox directory, it is automatically available on the same directory in all my other computers. Since basically, the only files I store there are my mathematical papers (want copies? Just ask) I don’t care about security. And if Dropbox goes under (or wants to start charging), then I will have to go back to USB sticks to sync my own files. Meantime, it is quite convenient.
Yeah, I remember seeing the Gears somewhere a ways back, but I’ve flushed out the computer since. Thanks for that.
See, I still use client e-mail. I know a lot of people that do. Especially when I’m in a low internet area (i.e., out in rural quebec, tethered to my blackberry), it’s nice to prep up 5-10 e-mails, and then turn on the internet and fire them all out in one swift blow. Now, if the entire continent becomes saturated with 5G/free-wi fi courtesy of Skynet (I kid) and the internet is omnipresent, then sure, that becomes more a nuisance than anything else.
I think there’s more to this quote than Ellison would let on.
Ellison has a well-known rivalry with Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, pretty much the leading enterprise cloud-computing provider. Benioff used to be the golden boy at Oracle - he made a VP at 26, and was on the fast track to become a C-level executive, when he quit and started Salesforce.com in '99.
Ellison being who he is, seems to have taken this very personally - here’s a guy who’s never seen a business fad he didn’t like, yet he’s constantly disparaging the business model that Salesforce.com pretty much created.
I do that with Gmail, now that it has offline capability (using Google Gears, I believe). It stores a specified amount of e-mails on the client side storage device, so I have access to my e-mail even without a live internet connection. I can write e-mails and they get stored in the outbox until the next time I have internet connection.
The nice thing about this system, compared to a traditional e-mail client, is that I can have multiple computers synchronized to the Gmail server at the same time. And of course I don’t have to back up the e-mail on my PC, or export/import the data every time I switch to a new PC.