Researchers Critique Today's Cloud Computing 63
Red Leader. writes "MAYA Design just released an excerpt from one of their forthcoming books as a white paper. The paper offers a different perspective on cloud computing. Their view is that cloud computing, as currently described, is not that far off from the sort of thinking that drove the economic downturn. In effect, both situations allowed radical experiments to be performed by gigantic, non-redundant entities (PDF). This is dangerous, and the paper argues that we should insist on decentralized, massively-parallel venues until we understand a domain very, very well. In the information economy, this means net equality, information liquidity, and radically distributed services (and that's pretty much the opposite of 'cloud computing' as described today). While there is still hope for computing in the cloud, it's hard not to wonder if short-term profits, a lack of architectural thinking about security and resilience, and long-term myopia aren't leading us in the wrong direction."
Researchers discover 'cloud' means multiple things (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't use the term at all. Putting thinks like network storage, Amazon's EC2, Google Docs and del.icio.us together is non-sensical. Yes, 'cloud computing' is a buzzword. I knew that. Maya's vision for a true P2P information network is nice though, albeit somewhat too idealistic.
I don't understand. I must not be a researcher. (Score:5, Insightful)
This makes no sense. Even the deduction makes no sense, in context. TSK TSK those idiots who invented the mouse were engaging in risky behavior?! Let's demonstrate insight by mentioning an economic trend that has nothing to do with technical innovation? Why would radical experiments be conducted by redundant entities? I am scared to download the PDF, for fear it's got more insight that will frustrate and elicit vitriol from me.
Re:Researchers discover 'cloud' means multiple thi (Score:3, Insightful)
I totally agree. If you host your servers in one datacenter (cloud) you chose that one and not an other one. And if that datacenter brakes down, you have a problem. Same with clouds.
The article says a cloud works the same as a normal cloent-server application. On the otside that is true, but one dig difference is it should (if the application is desishould well) scale rather nicely.
Example: There is a website that compares different ideas of different parties and with a couple of questions it tells you that party is the closest to your idead (that is nice when you have 20 parties to choose from in the upcoming EU elections) But such an application probably has high traffic probably 2 months every four years. Then you pump up the number of servers and after the elections you reduce to one or two again. No costs of buying hardware and all the stuff.
Coming back to your point (and that of the paper): you pick one cloud to host your application and then why would you want to be able to communicate with different clouds???
So you mean that the real way to end the crisis (Score:4, Insightful)
allowed radical experiments to be performed by gigantic, non-redundant entities (PDF). This is dangerous,
So we should break up the large banks, and replace them with an untold number of smaller, local banks that each follow their own strategy ?
Letting them go bankrupt should have exactly this effect. Destroy the whole, sell of the pieces one-by-one to the highest bidder.
And the alternative is propping up banks, running the extremely enormous risk that we've misidentified the cause of the current crisis ... (too much regulation ? too little ? Obama ? Bush ? Clinton ? CRA ? The devil ? Oil price ? Energy prices ? GW (not GW itself obviously, but the policies "to prevent it" are affecting the economy) ? I'm not arguing for anyone of them, I'm just saying there's probably good arguments for a lot of these factors)
If we misidentify the cause of the current failure, or fail to act on it, even slightly, then we'll have an even bigger disaster on our hands in a few months/a few years ...
So we should force the banks to follow a much more capitalist course, versus Obama's communist "fix" ... well one would have to admit that's a given.
(I'm using the capitalist/communist distinction in it's original distinction : centrally (government) directed versus distributed decision making. With these (long used) definitions Obama's actions are squarely in the communist camp).
Re:Researchers discover 'cloud' means multiple thi (Score:5, Insightful)
Not it is not the same with clouds and that was the researchers point. The term "Cloud" should not be a marketing buzzword for scalable. There should not be multiple "Clouds". The entire point of the Cloud as they refer to it was that it was amorphous and ubiquitous. One of their nicest points is that you slap a brand name on it then it is no longer the Cloud.
The current crop of so-called "Cloud" services (like Amazon) are a decent enough attempt to provide this type of platform, but provides a highly redundant platform as a single point of failure is not the same thing as removing the single point of failure. Amazon's platform can still fall over (and did for several hours earlier this year). In real Cloud computing that would not be an issue because rather than being tied to Amazons servers / datacenter you could execute your code anywhere that provided the service.
One of the problems with the real Cloud of the 90s was that it became too successful. So now we don't see it anymore. The architecture of the lower levels of the internet is now firmly entrenched: tcp/ip, dns etc. That is the real Cloud, a platform that we can write code for that really is ubiquitous. Services like Amazon are a logical progression of that platform, but they are not the logical endpoint. When there is a standardised API for code that will run on any of the major providers, accessing storage from any of the major providers, and able to replicate across them at will (chasing the cheapest prices) then the Cloud will really have arrived.
Finally, just to answer your question in a more concrete and exact way:
It's important to drill through the marketing buzzwords that the paper is rallying against. By definition there are no multiple clouds. So really what you are asking is why should I want to talk to different providers within the same Cloud?
Resilience. Partly to avoid downtime, partly to avoid vendor lockin. If I develop my application for EC2 and then Amazon decide to get out of the scalable computing business - I'm screwed. It's a similar situation to the drm-locked media where the license servers shut down after the company stopped selling it.
Another reason - competition. If I can move my application between Google and Amazon at will then I will pay the cheapest price for my cycles. If I have to recode my application to redeploy it then it will require a huge price differential before I do that.
Missing the point (Score:4, Insightful)
The article is missing the point that many of the organizations that offer a 'cloud solution' (Amazon, Google, Joyent, etc) have already been experimenting with cloud computing for a long friggin' time, and the massive parallel experimentation phase was "who can grow without breaking". Now they're offering what they learned from that as a service.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
A bit of a kurfuffle (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, sure, the "cloud" buzzword is annoying and not very useful. That happens a lot in our wonderful business. But saying that EC2, GoogleApps, and Azure are all dead ends because they're the products of large corporations is a lot of fuss over nothing.
No doubt the definition of "cloud computing" will evolve. For today, it primarily means not having to know any details about specific servers anymore, or worrying about how to connect to them. That's not a terribly original notion, but it is a big step forward.
To those of use who remember life before ubiquitous networking, ubiquitous data protocols, and ubiquitous storage, we are hugely grateful for what little bit of cloud computing we've got.