Understanding True Cloud Computing: Could 10 year olds help?

Gartner's 2010 Hype Cycle report is out. Cloud Computing has now crossed the peak of hype curve.



Now, the question still is how many of us really know the true meaning of cloud computing? Wikipedia does its bit by explaining key concepts in cloud computing. Here is the closest definition I could see for Cloud Computing on wikipedia

Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared servers provide resources, software, and data to computers and other devices on demand, as with the electricity grid.

It is a good starting point. But there are a number of things that are not well explained. To be fair with everybody, it is not easy to define cloud computing ! There is so much information out there that tries to explain the true meaning of cloud computing but it is hard to pinpoint the key parts.

Here is a very funny video of how 10 year olds explain what cloud computing is



I don't necessarily agree with everything in the video. When such kind of information is produced, the focus tends to shift on subset or related technologies based on who is sponsoring the content. The end result is that, you hear the things that sponsor wants you to listen. This might also mean you are missing the big picture similar to blind men and elephant tale.

The best information that I have found so far is from James Staten. The good thing about him is that he makes it easy for readers to help understand cloud computing. Here is how James defines cloud computing -

Cloud Computing is a standardized IT capability (services, software or infrastructure) in a pay-per-use, self-service way

The 3 main layers of cloud computing could be described as



Finally, it is important to distinguish some aspects of cloud computing from the traditional IT. Here is a great illustration:





In 2011, we are likely to see more and more customer transitions towards cloud. In other words, rather than "if", it is going to be a question of "when" the transition will take place! There have been several solutions that have been rebranded to look like cloud computing solutions. So, before somebody claims that they have cloud computing solution, it is important to make sure it truly meets basic characteristics for a cloud solution. Otherwise it would be just a case of "cloud-washing" !

I hope some of the things that I referred here would be useful for you to understand what "true" cloud computing is all about.

Google's attempt to bolster the security via crowdsourcing

Security remains on of top concerns in cloud computing and rightly so. But, how could a cloud service provider ensure that it is doing everything possible to address the security issues to an extent that customers feel comfortable?

Google is adopting a radical approach towards addressing these issues: crowdsourcing. Earlier this month, Google announced a cash reward offer for any interested individual (aka hacker) who could report vulnerabilities on its Web properties. The vulnerability reward program promises to pay anywhere between $500 to $3100 depending on severity of the issue. The company is hoping that the reward program will attract enough enthusiasts (hackers, students, researchers and so on) such that they will reveal certain issues that are worth paying for.

The program is now available to subset of Google properties like

• *.google.com
• *.youtube.com
• *.blogger.com
• *.orkut.com

Some of the types of issues that Google is most interested in finding about include

• XSS
• XSRF / CSRF
• XSSI (cross-site script inclusion)
• Bypassing authorization controls (e.g. User A can access User B's private data)
• Server side code execution or command injection

More details are available here

By the way... one more thing. Google will double the reward if the person decides to donate the amount to charity !

Any takers out there???

Boom Boom: Dell buys Boomi

For those of us who have spent years integrating heterogeneous systems know it very well that integrating the systems is a daunting task. Some of the challenges like interoperability, versioning, security, user experience issues, performance and scalability issues make it hard to pull off really robust integration .

In recent years though a number of cloud providers have been able to expose a lot of capabilities via APIs making it easy for integrators to integrate third party applications with them. Enterprises who are using these cloud providers are increasing depending on the integrations to implement their mission critical business process. For example.. your company might be using SAP/Oracle for CRM needs and then buys another company that is using cloud based CRM like salesforce.com/NetSuite. Considering the amount of data that resides inside these apps and business processes that are built around it, it is never easy to come up with a solution that could be readily agreed upon. Your company can decide to dump one of the systems in favor of other. However that is not an obvious choice in the short term. Better approach would to keep using both the systems with right bridge between them that would take care of combining the data in a meaningful fashion.

The Cloud Integration companies promise to address that very need to integrate the on-premises application and/or cloud apps. The promise with the integration connector comes with the claim that there is no coding, software or appliance is involved. Boomi touts itself as #1 Integration Cloud. It is not clear to me in what sense they are #1. But just going by the number of partners they have in this space, it is clear that they have very thriving echosystem of partners.

The biggest news in cloud computing last week is got to be Dell buying Boomi ! I must agree that somebody buying Boomi is of no surprise to me. But Dell buying Boomi comes as a surprise. I have not been following what Dell portfolio looks like for Cloud Computing. I presume they have some good assets in infrastructure space but not anything in pure software as prominent as Boomi. So Boomi acquisition is very interesting. I would guess that rather than augmenting they have, Boomi will prove as a catalyst to buy few more. We will have to wait and watch !