Comments on: Cloud computing on the horizon

Sun Microsystems CTO Greg Papadopoulos predicts that by the beginning of 2010 the majority of systems sold would be for Web, high-performance computing, and software-as-a-service applications.

[Tony McCune]

It's interesting that he is predicting this. I noticed that Dell is also looking at this as a path to the future. http://tmccune.blogspot.com/2008/06/dell-cloud-microsoft-threat.html

[Brentbb0]

The "Cloud" is for airheads. John C. Dvorak said as much recently in PC Magazine, and for many reasons including:

1) Possible network congestion and outages
2) Possible unwarranted, wrongful disconnection by s/w company
3) No control over unwanted updates and "new features"
4) Potential price gouging once committed
5) Industrial espionage (ie recent Rupert Murdoch allegations)
6) And what happens if your online s/w company goes belly up?
7) NO protection from government snooping

among other reasons (see July 2008 PC Mag)

And why would s/w companies want to get us into this mess?

Oh, I know! Because they have our best interests at heart (and want to
save us money, too!)

And what's that I hear over there?

Oh yeah...that ugly, meshing sound again. You know, the one that you hear
when big business and government start getting a little too tight with each
other.

Yep, Cloud Computing is what we need alright!

[botchagalupe]

I think he's wrong on some points. He makes the same arguments that Nick Carr makes. IMHO, the IT theater will contain more than just six huge IT infrastructures and only 100 or more sub infrastructures. I think it will be more likely that interoperable infrastructures of "many" cloud and non cloud infrastructures will emerge.

The next big phase in the "cloud" evolution will be vendors creating standards that will give the customers and other vendors the ability to run portions of their business across private and public infrastructures cloud and non cloud.. Business services will span between behind the firewall as legacy apps, behind the firewall private clouds, and a mix of vendors provided public clouds. I think it's silly to assume that only 6 vendors will rule the IT infrastructure in a global economy. Emerging technology hubs like India and China might have something to say about that. In fact Tata is doing some interest stuff today w/supercomputers. I am not sure they are going to let IBM and Google have all the fun by themselves. In fact will Google ever be relevant in China? However, I do agree with him that in the second decade of this new millennium most business services will have touchpoints in a cloud. The economies of scale are just to compelling.

johnmwillis.com

[rontowns25]

Cloud computing is still a vague term. It's kind of like saying something is web 3.0. Its merely a marketing term with no tangible identity tied to it. Its basically a human fabrication. That said, bothaglupe brings up some critical points above. Also, how can our current infrastructure support "cloud computing." Companies are becoming more open source but they are still very separate entities... I'd suggest reading some of the articles from here about how cloud computing will affect internet marketing... www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2

[jwilcox1701]

I agree, though I suspect people aren't thinking far enough ahead yet.

Even companies that don't push their infrastructure out to a provider will want to maximize their infrastructure agility. They will achive it by architecting / refactoring for cloud technology. It will become a best practice

http://edgewatertech.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/best-practice-cloud-computing/