Re: [clouds] Scope of the Cloud is too big

[Sam Johnston <[e-mail]>]

On 8 April 2010 14:36, Gene Golovinsky <[e-mail]> wrote:

>  While I agree that SaaS, IaaS and PaaS are different categories they all
> basically do the same thing – letting people consume IT functions as
> service.
>
> Agreed - cloud computing shifts computation [back] from the nodes to the
network, typically making it someone else's problem in the process. The
delivery of computing as a service (ala the electricity grid) rather than as
a product (ala a diesel generator) will certainly require some
standardisation effort, particularly given it's far more complicated than
just setting a voltage and frequency.

Regarding the definition, it's not precise but who cares - it doesn't need
to be so long as it's accurate (note that nobody cared that client-server
was imprecise). The best definition I've been able to come up with so far
(with the help of fellow Wikipedians) is "*Internet-based computing, whereby
shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and
other devices on-demand, like a public utility*", which is itself a
refinement of my earlier definition, simply "*Internet ('Cloud') based
development and use of computer technology ('Computing')*". If you try to
drill down from here to improve precision you lose accuracy - trust me, I've
tried. Let's just accept that we're not going to have a
definition/stack/etc. everyone agrees with and move on.

One way to look at it is that the Internet (the global network of networks)
kept us amused for a few decades by relaying packets between nodes at the
edge (most of the time). Some nodes were providers (servers), some consumers
(clients) and others filled both roles (e.g. P2P). It's like the electricity
grid without power stations - cloud computing just adds the latter
(typically in the form of nextgen data centers but could just as easily be
p2p or volunteer computing for all the client cares).

Today we have a number of largely independent "clouds" (Amazon, Google,
Microsoft, etc.) that are loosely coupled with protocols like OpenID as well
as proprietary protocols like Amazon's EC2 and S3. These will eventually
merge into the Intercloud (the global cloud of clouds) and for this to
happen we will certainly need distributed but coordinated (in the sense of
collaboration rather than control) standardisation. I personally believe the
IETF could play a key role here, as it did for the development of the
Internet.

Cheers,

Sam

-- 
*Sam Johnston*
*Technical Program Manager*
Site Reliability Engineering
Google Switzerland GmbH