On 6/8/2012 10:44 AM, Keith Medcalf wrote:
That is *the* definition of "Cloud". The term "Cloud" is a proxy for the expression "under the exclusive control of a third-party over which we have no influence nor control in order to gain plausibile denibility and CYA ptotection if something bad happens".
Here is my take on this... I think that hosting/datacenter admins sat around one day and lamented about the fact that so many of their clients were buying dedicated hosting servers and utilizing a very tiny percent of the CPU & storage. Often, the customer had been burned by "shared hosting" years earlier because of another shared hosting customer on the same server crashing the entire server, thus making everyone on that box suffer. So dedicated hosting became critical for many businesses who outsourced their hosting. But, again, many of those boxes sat year round utilizing something like <5% of CPU, and <5% of the available disk space (after OS installation). Then "virtual servers" matured, where you could create entire logically partitioned boxes running on the same server. These were sold as "virtual dedicated" servers, which was a step up from "shared hosting", and a step down from getting a dedicated server. But many didn't like this because they it was inherent that they were stuck on the same box with other customers. Those with deep pockets didn't take the bait. It had a niche, but didn't make for a good "sales pitch". Next, they found a way to leverage virtual servers by making it so that the virtual server didn't have to reside on one box... but could dynamically use various resources from a server farm, as needed. (for a simplified explanation). Thus, the "cloud" was then born. Now... all those unused CPU cycles and disk space are not wasted any more... they are dynamically put to use. RESULT>>>the aggregate sum of all that re-allocatable drive space and CPU cycles is ENORMOUS. It makes for a massively more efficient leveraging of hardware and software. The ratio of hardware costs to costumer revenue is massively better for a hoster/datacenter compared to selling traditional dedicated servers. That is not necessarily bad because some of the cost savings is passed back to the consumer in the form of lower prices. So this is not evil. Plus, there is an ability to "scale up" that exists with the cloud (where affordable!). But the funny part about this is that (a) the extent that cost savings are passed back to the client AND (b) the improved "scale up" technology.. those are the ONLY 2 benefits of cloud computing. Everything else is to benefit the hoster/datacenter. That so many CEOs/CTOs/directors/etc have bought into the hype, and see some kind of magical benefits seemingly beyond this... is just amazing. Personally, I prefer paying a little extra for my own dedicated and/or co-located servers... where I'm in total control of ALL aspects of hardware/software. -- Rob McEwen http://dnsbl.invaluement.com/ rob@invaluement.com +1 (478) 475-9032