David said:Cloud computing is not aimed at routine client-server applications
although it may provide an inexpensive way of hosting them. It is
intended for applications that need large amounts of processing and/or
storage. Your link is all that is needed to transfer the image of a
person coming up your drive to Amazon's servers where it can be
processed against terabytes of images and return a short biography of
your visitor before they ring the door bell.
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax said:David Segall wrote:
Maybe, but does anyone know of *any* real apps people will use?
Dirk said:Not if their connection is as slow as mine.
So, what cloud apps do you think will prosper?
Dirk said:Maybe, but does anyone know of *any* real apps people will use?
Dirk said:Every few years the industry tries and sells "The Mainframe" under a
different guise. This is just the latest version. It will have a niche
appeal, but I don't see it as being any kind of revolution.
Patrick said:We're seeing it used in many financial applications like risk
analytics, real time P & L, Monte Carlo simulations, and similar
parallelizable systems. It's also useful in telco for applications like
root cause analysis and fraud detection.
Most early adopters are thinking in terms of private clouds rather
than public offerings, both because they already have the hardware and
because of security and other SLA concerns. Some are starting to use
EC2 for testing, though. It's much easier to fire up a couple of
hundred nodes on a public cloud infrastructure for an hour or two than
to get all that hardware provisioned in an internal testing environment.
Arne said:Most web apps run great on a 3 Mbit line.
But obviously if people want to run something over the internet
connection, then they will need sufficient bandwidth for the
purpose.
Almost all server apps could be hosted in the cloud.
The cloud concept makes it most interesting for apps
with huge variations in resource requirements.
Arne
Arne said:I know about a lot of web apps and server side apps that people
want to use.
Most of them can be hosted in the cloud.
If you are looking for examples of current cloud users
then look at:
http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/
http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2008/10/app-engine-case-studies.html
Arne
Arne said:I don't think it is very close to a mainframe model.
I don't think there are many mainframe users today that
rent access to a mainframe and pay per CPU/disk/network usage
and where the supplier promises that you can increase your
usage almost limitless from day to day.
Arne
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax said:In which case I'm already using cloud computing, and have been for
years, by having a website. As for huge variations in resource
requirements, even I don't have much need for a supercomputer.
Let alone
Joe Public.
Dirk said:Well, "cloud computing", as in using a terminal to access a
supercomputer, is hardly new.
If cloud computing is going to take off in
a big way rather than remain a niche market then there's got to be
something for "ordinary" users. So far I can't see that, aside from
editing Word documents in Internet Cafes on Google..
In which case I'm already using cloud computing, and have been for
years, by having a website.
As for huge variations in resource
requirements, even I don't have much need for a supercomputer. Let alone
Joe Public.
Dirk said:Seems like "cloud computing" is just another name for "a website"
Dirk said:I thought that was the model for every website hosting package?
David said:All of that is currently true but what if a short video on your web
site attracted millions of visitors for a week or two. If it happened
today it is likely that your visitors would get a "timed out" message
but if you were keen for the world to see your video then having your
web server in "the cloud" would ensure they receive your message.
Dirk said:I suspect that putting my site in "the cloud" would cost exactly the
same as buying extra bandwidth from my ISP host.
Arne said:Google probably get some discounts compared to your ISP host,
but that is a detail.
The big difference between Google and your ISP is that
Google could deliver the service immediately while your
ISP would need to buy more servers and more bandwidth - and
if the ISP suspected that business would not continue at that
level, then the ISP would not make the investment.
Arne
Arne said:No.
Cheap web hotels typical have N levels (bronze, silver, gold,
platinum or whatever they call them), which each a certain
features set (disk space, database space, email addresses,
server side scripting etc.) and a certain price.
With traditional VPS you can order more systems, but usually
it takes more time, the customer needs to know more about the
infrastructure and they support customers that may want XX servers
not customers that may want XXXX servers.
It is not a coincidence that it is Google, Amazon, Microsoft,
IBM, SUN, Yahoo etc. that provides clouds. A provider needs
some bloody big data centers.
Arne
Dirk said:Still sounds like marketing hype to me.
Dirk said:Well, that's a rental contract issue and not one of technology AFAIK
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