Looking to the Cloud in 2013

 General, News, Virtualization  No Responses »
Jan 092013
 

Every year as the calendar comes to an end, a new year invariably elicits statements, declarations, and discussions about what kind of year it will be.  People proudly proclaim that this is they year they will lose that last ten pounds that has been hanging around, pundits make bold proclamations about the future of the political landscape, and industry professionals predict what the next wave will be to revolutionize their specific area of expertise.

For those of us who develop software, it has become clear that the prediction we need to be aware of is that 2013 will be the “boom or bust” year for all things cloud.  Then again, that was also the same prediction we heard heading into 2012.  And yet here we are again standing on the precipice of change.  No one can deny that the last year saw great advances in the world of cloud computing, specifically the proliferation of the public cloud by companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.  Previously, cloud computing had been the province of smaller niche software companies and data storage centers.  But as that business model showed gains in both popularity of adoption and profitability, the larger companies have finally committed their resources to capitalize on what has become a proven business model.

While mid-sized players in the private cloud arena such as VMware and Rackspace continue to offer greater efficiency and agility for specific end user needs, large global firms such as Oracle and HP are some of the new IaaS and SaaS players in what is a rapidly expanding landscape that is predicted to generate more than $40 billion in customer spending.  And yet, Amazon is still holding nearly 70% of that market share.

Just a few years ago, this conversation was limited to offsite data storage and accessibility of that data by remote users.  But with the rapid expansion of available cloud based web applications, file sharing platforms, and development of more such management tools by greater numbers of startups and boutique firms, the landscape has become littered with an overwhelming number of options for both early adopters of cloud technology and those looking to finally jump into the cloud.

After years of dealing with such a wide array of technologies and offerings from an endless list of developers, there has been a general shift in attitude towards the endless cloud debate.  There have been too many expectations for too long, and the tipping point is fast approaching.  Modern technology has become faster and more intuitive and accessible at a moment’s notice and end users will simply not wait much longer for a unified solution.

So while 2013 might not be the year the cloud finally dominates the IT world, it should bring about a firmer and more consistent public cloud offering.  If it doesn’t, the multitude of private cloud players just may very well continue to dilute the market share of the major players and wreak havoc in an already confusing and diverse world of cloud offerings.

 

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A Walk through the Clouds

 Education, General  No Responses »
May 232012
 


 

Unless you live under a rock on a deserted island, chances are you have heard about, considered using, or are moving toward “The Cloud.”  It is now a prevalent and unavoidable topic of conversation that has finally made its way from computing industry professionals to the general populace.   In the very near future, “The Cloud” will have become just another term in the lexicon of technology that people accept as a part of their daily computer activity, even if they don’t entirely understand it.  Much like instant messaging, search engine, the web, and Wi-Fi, the cloud is rapidly becoming as much a part of our daily lives as the bowl of cereal we have to start our day.

So how is it that most people can’t actually explain what the cloud is or where it came from?  How can something that is rapidly becoming a standard still be such a vague mystery to most who use it?  Rather than wondering how this phenomenon evolved, I thought it might be a great use of this space to explain how the cloud actually came to be.  My hope is that by understanding where the cloud came from, the reader can see how it will continue to develop.

The Cloud had very humble beginnings in the 1960’s as a future concept discussed by people like Joseph Licklider and Douglas Parkhill.  And while that discussion continued for decades, it was a very slow evolution from concept to proof of concept as developers and futurists were forced to wait for technology to develop a strong foundation upon which the concept could be explored.

Once internet service had begun to invade homes across the world in the 1990’s, the development and deployment of the infrastructure for rapid development of a grid (both electrical and computing) hit terminal velocity, as demand far outweighed supply.  For the first time, the intranet / local network architecture employed by large businesses in enclosed environments could be employed on a much bigger open scale.  This leap forward led to the birth of global pioneers like VMware and Salesforce who led the way in proliferating concepts such as SaaS (Software as a Service) and Virtualization.

With the success of this new internet model, which allowed individual users to integrate online content from anywhere with their own individual website / digital presence, the cloud was well on its way to becoming the natural evolution of the current model of hardline internet service and data sharing.   In 2003, Nicholas Carr began publishing a series of articles and books about the future growth of cloud computing under the banner “IT Doesn’t Matter” where he extrapolated that internet access and use would become a common and accepted commodity like other utilities such as water or electricity.

After that, the dominoes continued to fall quickly.  Throughout the decade there was a string of advances including Amazon’s IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) model which laid the foundation for the “pay-for-use” cloud business model, the PaaS (Platform as a Service) model developed by Salesforce via Force.com, and the open source cloud platform created by Eucalyptus.  This, in turn, led to market giants such as Google and Gartner taking notice and making sure that everyone else did as well.

Since then, the paradigm has shifted as continuing technological advances have outpaced the ability of both futurists and market experts to predict the next advancement in data storage and sharing.  But for the time being, it is comforting to know that we live in an age where a walk through the clouds requires nothing more than sitting at a desk and clicking a mouse.