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What is Cloud Computing?

The cloud is a virtualization of resources that maintains and manages itself

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June 2, 2008 - Cloud computing is becoming one of the next industry buzz words. It joins the ranks of terms including: grid computing, utility computing, virtualization, clustering, etc.

Cloud computing overlaps some of the concepts of distributed, grid and utility computing, however it does have its own meaning if contextually used correctly. The conceptual overlap is partly due to technology changes, usages and implementations over the years.

Trends in usage of the terms from Google searches shows Cloud Computing is a relatively new term introduced in the past year. There has also been a decline in general interest of Grid, Utility and Distributed computing.

Likely they will be around in usage for quit a while to come.  But Cloud computing has become the new buzz word driven largely by marketing and service offerings from big corporate players like Google, IBM and Amazon.

* distributed computing
* grid computing
* utility computing
* cloud computing

term trends graph

The term cloud computing probably comes from (at least partly) the use of a cloud image to represent the Internet or some large networked environment. We don’t care much what’s in the cloud or what goes on there except that we depend on reliably sending data to and receiving data from it. Cloud computing is now associated with a higher level abstraction of the cloud. Instead of there being data pipes, routers and servers, there are now services. The underlying hardware and software of networking is of course still there but there are now higher level service capabilities available used to build applications. Behind the services are data and compute resources. A user of the service doesn’t necessarily care about how it is implemented, what technologies are used or how it’s managed. Only that there is access to it and has a level of reliability necessary to meet the application requirements.


Launched in 2007, Cloud Expo is the world's largest Cloud Computing event.

In essence this is distributed computing. An application is built using the resource from multiple services potentially from multiple locations. At this point, typically you still need to know the endpoint to access the services rather than having the cloud provide you available resources. This is also know as Software as a Service. Behind the service interface is usually a grid of computers to provide the resources. The grid is typically hosted by one company and consists of a homogeneous environment of hardware and software making it easier to support and maintain. (note: my definition of a grid is different from the wikipedia definition, but homogeneous environments in data centers is typically what I have run across). Once you start paying for the services and the resources utilized, well that’s utility computing.

Cloud computing really is accessing resources and services needed to perform functions with dynamically changing needs. An application or service developer requests access from the cloud rather than a specific endpoint or named resource. What goes on in the cloud manages multiple infrastructures across multiple organizations and consists of one or more frameworks overlaid on top of the infrastructures tying them together. Frameworks provide mechanisms for:

  • self-healing
  • self monitoring
  • resource registration and discovery
  • service level agreement definitions
  • automatic reconfiguration

The cloud is a virtualization of resources that maintains and manages itself. There are of course people resources to keep hardware, operation systems and networking in proper order. But from the perspective of a user or application developer only the cloud is referenced. The Assimilator project is a framework that executes across a heterogeneous environment in a local area network providing a local cloud environment. In the works is the addition of a network overlay to start providing an infrastructure across the Internet to help achieve the goal of true cloud computing.

More Stories By Kevin Hartig

Kevin Hartig currently directs and constructs projects using new software technologies and methodologies to demonstrate the feasibility of new concepts in real business applications at Sun Microsystems, Inc. He is owner and administrator of the open source Assimilator project - a platform for running distributed services in LANs and WANs.

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Most Recent Comments
[email protected] 07/28/10 09:59:00 AM EDT

We found a great visual about cloud computing. Simple and informative, and easier on the eye than a long blog post: http://bit.ly/cZLjN3

jonrgs 12/23/09 05:50:00 PM EST

Great thoughts guys !! here is my take.

RBruklis 06/30/09 08:08:00 AM EDT

Here is my definition...

“A new way to deploy or virtualize IT using the internet as a method to quickly borrow/use resources (compute, storage, infrastructure, applications) and keep those resources for any given amount of time – a 'rent' vs.
buy' model”

[email protected] 11/21/08 02:38:40 AM EST

Cloud Computing is a broad term. Simply searching "Cloud Computing" on Google will give you a listing of the Wikipedia page that has a great video at the bottom of the external links section.

Personally, I reviewed the entire Wikipedia document and found many things that are familiar to me and our ASP businesses from past and present technology configurations.

One very note-able difference however, is the concepts of mass consumption of data (text and binary), scalability, new abstraction layers, strong APIs and SOA Web Service offerings, and a proliferation of heavy attention being focused to solve new issues for Cross Domain Security imposed by the web browsers sandboxes. Single Sign On with SAML is now the standard for Cross Platform, and Cross Framework and SaaS offerings are the key to making the link work.

A myriad of new computing and Identity Management scenarios are being born and enhanced every day in turn Glue-ing these powerful Cloud Based technologies, disparate networks, and application data stores into one or more unified Modals for business.

Enterprise mashups and Meta data companies like Nubifer.com which is primarily a Data Rich company offering real time feed analytics of all of your inter and extra connected web applications.

Regards,
[email protected]
www.Nubifer.com

Neil Murphy 07/08/08 05:43:20 AM EDT

Isn't this just a variation on the old bureau services of many years ago? Some different approaches etc but the same principle.

Sam 06/05/08 05:50:01 AM EDT

Hi,

I surf with www.treehoo.com that uses most of its profit to plant trees and fight global warming and climate change. The service is free and on the site you can do Google searches plus more. Everyone should use it as their default homepage, I do!

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