In the Clouds

Ask any five IT specialists what cloud computing is, and you’re likely to get five different answers.

Cloud computing is the latest, broadest development in a trend that's been growing for years.

Cloud computing is the most recent successor to grid computing, utility computing, virtualization and clustering.

Cloud computing overlaps those concepts but has its own meaning: the ability to connect to software and data on the Internet (the cloud) instead of on your hard drive or local network.

To do anything with a PC 10 years ago, you needed to buy and install software.

Now, cloud computing allows users to access programs and resources across the Internet as if they were on their own machines

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Cloud computing describes a system where users can connect to a vast network of computing resources, data and servers that reside somewhere "out there," usually on the Internet, rather than on a local machine or a LAN or in a data center.

Cloud computing can give on- demand access to supercomputer-level power, even from a thin client or mobile device such as a smart phone or laptop.

First, there were mainframe computers, then minicomputers, PCs and servers.

As computers became physically smaller and resources more distributed, problems sometimes arose when users needed more computing power.

IT specialists tried clustering computers, allowing them to talk with one another and balance computing loads.

Users didn't care which processing unit ran their program, and cluster software managed everything.

But clustering proved to be difficult and expensive.

In the early 1990s, the grid concept emerged: Users could connect to a network, much as they plugged into the electrical power grid, and use service on a metered-utility basis.

Thus, people began speaking of utility computing.

One problem was where data was stored.

Grid nodes could be located anywhere in the world, but there could be significant processing delays while data stored at other locations was transmitted.

Also, grid or cloud computing means users and businesses must migrate their applications and data to a third party or different platform.

For enterprises with huge investments in existing software and operational procedures, this has been a real barrier to adoption of these shared technologies.

Other significant concerns include data security and confidentiality.

Critical to the success of cloud computing has been the growth of virtualization, allowing one computer to act as if it were another -- or many others.

Server virtualization lets clouds support more applications than traditional computing grids, hosting various kinds of middleware on virtual machines throughout the cloud.

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There are several generally accepted benefits of cloud computing:

• Capital expenditure is minimized and thus there are low barrier to entry as infrastructure is owned by the provider and does not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks.
  
  
• Device and location independence which enables users to access systems regardless of location or what device they are using (eg PC, mobile).
  
  
• Multitenancy enabling sharing of resources (and costs) among a large pool of users, allowing for centralization of infrastructure in areas with lower costs (eg real estate, electricity) / peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest possible load levels) and utilization and efficiency improvements for systems that are often underutilised.
  
  
• Reliability by way of multiple redundant sites, which makes it suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery,however IT and business managers are able to do little when an outage hits them. Historical data on cloud outages is tracked in the Cloud Computing Incidents Database.
  
  
• Scalability which meets changing user demands quickly, without having to engineer for peak loads. Massive scalability and large user bases are common but not an absolute requirement.
  
  
• Security which typically improves due to centralization of data, increased security-focused resources, etc. but which raises concerns about loss of control over certain sensitive data. Accesses are typically logged but accessing the audit logs themselves can be difficult or impossible.

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Google is at the same time one of the strongest proponents of cloud computing and been seen to unfairly exploiting for its commercial advantage the boundaries of where cloud computing may lead.

Cloud neutrality raises the idea of to what extent should we say that whatever protections and privacy I have with regard to data on my computer, I should have the same protection with regard to data in the cloud.

Portability is the idea that your information, your documents, your images belong to you and you can pick them up and take them somewhere else.

That may not be possible if you're floating in a cloud controlled by Google. Every time you use one of Google's products, you have to sign a contract. And when you agree, you're giving away some important rights.

When Google released its new Chrome Web browser, just a few weeks ago, not everyone who consented to Google's contract would have understood the fine print.

Part of Clause 11 read that Google gets - Perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content.

The clause went on to state that it could distribute the content to 'other companies, organisations and individuals' and even 'change or modify the content for technical purposes.'

Savvy internet users realised what this clause meant.

Google would legally have the right to do anything with what you did on the internet through their browser.

Your passwords, anything you wrote in emails, music, songs, poetry, videos, Google could pass them on without telling you, to any number of third parties, or do what they like with it.

Google's explanation was that this was all just 'lawyer-speak'.

They simply needed permission from users to display their content to the wider world.

There was uproar.

Goggle backed down after one day, and withdrew all four paragraphs of Clause 11 and replaced it with one sentence.

That sentence basically says, the Chrome user, not Google, has rights to all content.

Welcome to the first, biggest and most important battle ground of cloud computing – privacy.

(Post is based in part on QuickStudy: Cloud Computing by Russell Kay Computerworld 8th May 2008 and Cloud Computing Background Briefing ABC Radio National 14 September 2008)