8
Cloud computing – the myth and
the reality
By Jon Collins, Freeform Dynamics
ECTIVES
ERSP
Isn’t it fascinating in this most irritating term, joint circle6 Service Oriented
industry, how some terms equal with Web 2.0. Architecture. Three decades
creep up and then suddenly have passed since software
appear like they were there all All the same, the arrival of luminaries first postulated the
the time? Nowhere is this more cloud computing is no principles of modular
apparent than with ‘Cloud’ accident. To understand why, application design, which was
which has managed to fill the let’s think about how IT has taken forward through object
OUD COMPUTING P column inches without anyone evolved over the past few orientation to yield the
CL really being clear on what it decades. Behind the ‘waves’ of standards-based architectures
means. In this article we try to progress – client-server, the we recognise today as being
cut through the vaporous Internet and so on, IT has ‘service-oriented’. SOA is a
curtain of cloud computing been evolving along a number work in progress, not least
and address the question – is of parallel tracks, in particular: because it is difficult to get
there anything of substance right, but it is part and parcel
behind it? circle6 Dynamic IT, or the ability to of how applications are written
It’s not that there aren’t some flex IT service delivery based today.
reasonable starting points for on end-user demand. This has
a definition of cloud existed in a number of guises, circle6 Resourcing. From the
computing, the most common most recently encapsulated by computer bureaux of the
of which tends to describe terms such as ‘on-demand’ or Seventies, through the
how IT services can be ‘adaptive’ IT. However such outsourcing wave of the
delivered from third party capabilities were envisaged Nineties to the ideas behind
providers using the Internet as back in the hey-day of the Software as a Service we see
a backbone. However, things mainframe, and remain today, IT procurement has
become considerably more relevant now. The latest been a balancing act between
complicated depending on the catalyst towards dynamic IT doing something in-house, or
organisation providing the has to be virtualisation, sourcing skills and services
definition: a hosting company, though it is early days yet. externally.
for example, sees things very
differently from an online circle6 The Internet. Again long in What we are seeing today is
application provider. gestation, we now have a not so much about the
situation where every compute convergence of these four
Given the current noise to device on the planet has the tracks, but more their collision.
signal ratio, is it any wonder, ability to connect to every A number of reasons exist –
that the term ‘cloud other using a standards-based the laws of physics yield new
computing’ is seen as an backbone. Some issues still innovations which drive the
irritation by end-user need to be ironed out, notably industry forward; the
organisations? In recent bandwidth/latency in general, economics of both IT and
research we conducted with and mobile access in business cause a focus on
the Register online web site, particular. But few would both efficiency and
‘cloud computing was disagree today with its effectiveness; both businesses
indicated as the number 1 importance. and purveyors of services are
MAR/APR 09 WWW.SNS-UK.CO.UK
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