Principle of the Cloud

The Basics:

The cloud is historically a metaphor used to describe the internet. You will recognise the cloud from common depiction of any network diagram as the fluffy thing/the internet that the firewall or router piers out to as per the below diagram.

There are many definitions of the cloud and to call it just the internet is an oversimplification, the internet is represented as the cloud because of the vast components, processes and technologies that make it operate. In essence it is a construct of octillions of connections to octillions of networks. To oversimplify and shoot myself in the foot again, you can therefore refer to any application that resides outside of your computer and is accessible via the internet as a cloud application. WAIT a minute did I just say that? There must be a massive hole in the logic because that just sounds like a traditional hosted solution, like dynamic websites or ecm systems, or as it’s the trend right now peer to peer computing with the use of applications that essentially make client machines available as part of the "cloud". A good example of this is bit torrents and applications which are increasingly becoming popular in the corporate scene team viewer and log me in. The point I am trying to make is that technically speaking it’s almost impossible to define cloud computing as a technical phenomenon, purely because everything available on the internet can qualify as cloud computing. The concept of cloud computing was first suggested in the 1960s, Professor John McCarthy was the first person to publicly suggest that computer time-sharing technology might lead to a future in which computing power and even specific applications could be sold through the utility business model (like water or electricity). Thank you <Wikipedia > This idea was revolutionary thinking at the time but it soon became apparent (in the 70s) the technologies of the day were simply not ready and it would be difficult to sustain such a computing model, alas the idea of utility computing faded into the background. However, since early 2000s the concept has enjoyed serious revitalisation. Bottom line goes like this, cloud computing is more a computing model / business model than a technical phenomenon. Without the utility based model, cloud computing as a concept doesn’t work. In actual fact it may be better if it is called utility based computing but that’s just my personal opinion. On the next blog I’ll cover the different types of cloud's (below) and the principles behind them, together with the technical and business application. - Public - Private - Hybrid (both public and private) - Others…