The Business Web 2.0
As CEO of business-based social networking site WeCanDo.BIZ, read my take on the role Web 2.0 technologies can play helping businesses to grow.
Wednesday 20 August 2008, 9:38 AM
Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!
Cloud computing is big news -- for all the right and all the wrong reasons. But is a bad definition taking the blame away from the organisations responsible when things don't work?
As someone keenly involved in the delivery of software over the internet, I have kept a keen eye on what was called Application Service Provision (ASP) 10 years ago. Passing through a transition to Software as a Service, the web based software offerings from Citrix, Google and Salesforce.com now often get referred to as "cloud computing". But I don't agree that such a thing really exists.
Mark Hopkins at Mashable opened up the debate this week (see http://mashable.com/2008/08/19/cloud-computing-defined), requesting a better definition of cloud computing. My contribution to his aticle was that, for those of us who have been involved in computing since way before the web had a version number, the cloud already has a definition.
The "cloud" was something I drew a lot when I used to be involved in implementing X.25 networks with Torus in the early nineties. A cloud was used to illustrate how corporate LANs were connected to each other, way before we could tap into the internet to get them talking. Our diagrams showed enterprise resources, perhaps user LANs on either side of the cloud, or 5250 terminals one one side and a Token Ring network of AS/400s on the other. The cloud was the transport to connect them all when the wires left the bulding. It was X.25 back then, but it would be the internet today.
But the cloud was a means to an end, not the end itself. Today, if applies to SaaS or Web 2.0, the thing at the other side of the cloud would be a datacentre: Google's datacentre, Amazon's datacentre, Salesforce.com's datacentre, Citrix's datacentre. These things aren't in the cloud. Unless, of course, the cloud has been highjacked for another purpose, like suggesting the datacentres should be shown in a cloud so they can be excused Service Level Agreements...
It annoys me that recent stories of outages at Amazon, Google and with Citrix's GoToMeeting were lumped together as being some sort of Web 2.0 malady, as in my mind it was just old fashioned poor service from the individual companies above whose software wasn't available. You can't blame the cloud OR Web 2.0, unless you believe that service levels don't matter in the Web 2.0 world.
This brings me onto something else that grates: beta programmes. Why is it Web 2.0 companies think that a beta release is a product launch and good enough to put live to all users? Latest perpetrator is Talkbiznow which, with much fanfare and coverage in The Times, The Telegraph and Guardian, "launched" their business focused social network on Monday. I was amongst the first there and found the launch was of a site clearly marked beta, although also referred to as "v1.0". Amongst all the talk of 3 million users in 6 months there is no mention of when the site will come out of test and when users can expect full service delivery without the errors (of which I have had two already).
I am not sure that terms like cloud and beta are being hijacked. Perhaps it is just that the people bolting these things together seem not to be looking to the best practices of the past, when the terms were first coined and where software was required to work with no excuses.
Ian Hendry
WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
As someone keenly involved in the delivery of software over the internet, I have kept a keen eye on what was called Application Service Provision (ASP) 10 years ago. Passing through a transition to Software as a Service, the web based software offerings from Citrix, Google and Salesforce.com now often get referred to as "cloud computing". But I don't agree that such a thing really exists.
Mark Hopkins at Mashable opened up the debate this week (see http://mashable.com/2008/08/19/cloud-computing-defined), requesting a better definition of cloud computing. My contribution to his aticle was that, for those of us who have been involved in computing since way before the web had a version number, the cloud already has a definition.
The "cloud" was something I drew a lot when I used to be involved in implementing X.25 networks with Torus in the early nineties. A cloud was used to illustrate how corporate LANs were connected to each other, way before we could tap into the internet to get them talking. Our diagrams showed enterprise resources, perhaps user LANs on either side of the cloud, or 5250 terminals one one side and a Token Ring network of AS/400s on the other. The cloud was the transport to connect them all when the wires left the bulding. It was X.25 back then, but it would be the internet today.
But the cloud was a means to an end, not the end itself. Today, if applies to SaaS or Web 2.0, the thing at the other side of the cloud would be a datacentre: Google's datacentre, Amazon's datacentre, Salesforce.com's datacentre, Citrix's datacentre. These things aren't in the cloud. Unless, of course, the cloud has been highjacked for another purpose, like suggesting the datacentres should be shown in a cloud so they can be excused Service Level Agreements...
It annoys me that recent stories of outages at Amazon, Google and with Citrix's GoToMeeting were lumped together as being some sort of Web 2.0 malady, as in my mind it was just old fashioned poor service from the individual companies above whose software wasn't available. You can't blame the cloud OR Web 2.0, unless you believe that service levels don't matter in the Web 2.0 world.
This brings me onto something else that grates: beta programmes. Why is it Web 2.0 companies think that a beta release is a product launch and good enough to put live to all users? Latest perpetrator is Talkbiznow which, with much fanfare and coverage in The Times, The Telegraph and Guardian, "launched" their business focused social network on Monday. I was amongst the first there and found the launch was of a site clearly marked beta, although also referred to as "v1.0". Amongst all the talk of 3 million users in 6 months there is no mention of when the site will come out of test and when users can expect full service delivery without the errors (of which I have had two already).
I am not sure that terms like cloud and beta are being hijacked. Perhaps it is just that the people bolting these things together seem not to be looking to the best practices of the past, when the terms were first coined and where software was required to work with no excuses.
Ian Hendry
WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
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