paul walk’s weblog

Over on ZDNet, Paul Miller has blogged some thoughts about what he calls the ‘Data Cloud’. He points out that in the evolution of the ‘cloud computing’ paradigm, the:

…emphasis for much of this wider discussion remains firmly rooted in the realm of computation and storage. On many levels it’s about offloading the costs of scaling and maintaining local infrastructure, and ‘data’ doesn’t really enter the conversation at all. Something is ‘stored,’ but it’s a nameless, faceless, shapeless something that merely exists in order to be stored or computed upon.

Initially, Paul posted the germ of this idea to Twitter, where I responded with a degree of scepticism. Having given it a little thought, I remain sceptical. However, I have realised that my own, internal, ideas of what the ‘Cloud’ entails has informed my scepticism, so I figure it might be worthwhile externalising these ideas. (Note that Paul has helpfully included in his post a variety of definitions from good sources, so I won’t revisit these here. Like such celebrated memes as ‘Web 2.0′, the meaning of ‘cloud’ in this context is delineated by broad consensus, rather than strict definition. Also, I suggest that the cloud is highly connotative - depending on the exact context within which it is used it can imply much.

The word itself must surely have come from all those network diagrams which included a cloud to denote the ‘great outdoors’ - i.e. the stuff beyond the local area network. (I actually remember seeing such a diagram years ago with “here be dragons” written inside the cloud).

Anyway, for what it’s worth, here are some of the characteristics which I think are important, and why I disagree (perhaps not very strongly) with Paul:

Remotely hosted:

In a literal, basic sense, if services or data are in the cloud, then they are hosted remotely, on someone else’s infrastructure. The immediate implication might be that the user also doesn’t particularly care, or even know about the details of this arrangement. At one level, this is nothing new - and if the data cloud is just meant to signify data out there, then OK - but this notion is almost as old as computer networking itself, and was certainly present at the birth of the Web.

However, the reason that the cloud meme has gained such traction over the last two years lies in the new possibilities for moving not just data, but applications, services and even infrastructure onto remote servers. Closely aligned with the Cloud in this context is Software as a Service (SaaS), which in contemporary terms means the delivery of application-specific functionality from a remote source, typically to a modern browser.

Ubiquitous:

If it’s in the Cloud, then it is available anywhere. There are many examples of where this statement could be challenged but there is, nonetheless, an expectation that if an application is delivered to me from the Cloud then I ought to be able to access and use it from any connected device with the requisite software. There is a weaker assumption that the requisite software might be simply a modern web browser.

Commodified:

One of the really interesting developments of recent years has been the introduction of infrastructure services to the Cloud. This moves an important aspect of computing services closer to the ‘utility’ model. I know which company ’supplies’ my electricity because they take large amounts of money off me and regularly send me ‘advice’ on how to reduce my bill (in case you’re wondering the best advice is to, “switch off things which are powered by electricity when you’re not using them”). However, I don’t know where that electricity is being generated, and frankly, one lot of electricity is much like another, regardless of who supplies it (in the UK at least!). So, I suggest that commodification works best where the commodity is undifferentiated. The history of computing is filled with examples of evolution towards undifferentiated supply of functionality - abstraction is the method used to achieve this. For example, if I want to run Linux on my servers, then I can use a variety of hardware, without much having to worry about this. If I pay someone else to provide me with Linux servers in the Cloud (this blog is running on one such), then I can get away with not even knowing the specifics of the hardware which hosts my system. To an extent, in trusting your infrastructure to a third party, you are saying “I trust you, look after this lot for me please and don’t bother me with the details”.

In fact, we have now reached the point, with services such as Amazon’s EC2 service, where we can say, “I’d like some computing power please - any old cycles will do”.

And right here is why I think I disagree with Paul. If you believe, as I do that the Cloud implies a move towards undifferentiated, commodified hardware and services, then I don’t see how to include data, at least most data. How often do you hear a user say, “I’d like some data please - any old data will do”. The value of data is often measures in terms of scarcity, provenance, authority, quality. When Paul describes data as a:

nameless, faceless, shapeless something that merely exists in order to be stored or computed upon.

I think he’s right - this is how data is represented in the Cloud. Where we differ, I guess, is that I think that this is a reasonable and useful way for the Cloud to treat data - it allows the Cloud to become ubiquitous and undifferentiated, feeing up the our time to concentrate on what we really care about - our data.

I’ll end with a song……Any old iron, any old iron, Any any any old iron….

Tags: cloud-computing, data-cloud, EC2, Paul-Miller, SaaS

Commenting on the Google Apps outage last week, John Proffitt, IT services director at APTI, an Alaskan public TV station, said:

“It was constant troubleshooting, testing, research, posting to the Google Apps forums and so on. Plus there’s the emotional strain of wondering whether you completely screwed up by moving everyone to Google Apps as our sole e-mail system. That’s what freaked me out: Did Google just make me look like an idiot?”

[via Gmail leaves Google Apps admins nervous on InfoWorld, my emphasis]

In the higher-education-institution (HEI) community I have seen a fair amount of debate recently about whether or not institutions should be looking to embrace the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model and, in particular, making use of all remote those Web 2.0 services. Why run local services, when you can simply find a remote service to provide for your needs?

Perhaps this is a model for the future. But is the right model for the present? There is a growing, commonly-held belief that we are about to enter a global recession. Just the fact that the assumption is commonly held may be enough to make this a reality. Clearly there is a degree of economic uncertainty. Is this a good moment for HEIs to begin a brave experiment with outsourcing services to remote companies?

Now, Google are clearly not a fly-by-night company - their size now makes them a fairly safe bet. But the vast majority of Web 2.0 companies are a fraction of the size of Google. As it is, many Web 2.0 services appear to exist with no visible means of support, other than venture capital. I imagine that venture capital can become harder to find in a period of economic down-turn. Much Web 2.0 service delivery is supported through an advertising model, relying on a revenue stream coming from a small percentage of advertisements ‘clicked’ on. Again, perhaps people are less likely to respond to advertisements in a recession….?

Chris Adie, who spoke on ‘Managing the Risks of Web 2.0‘ at this year’s (excellent) Eduserv Foundation Symposium, made the related point that Web 2.0 services which rely on a global scale in terms of numbers of users and/or on social networks will become decreasingly useful if the number of users starts to drop. Essentially, the network effect works both ways….

Incidentally, Chris also pointed us to some Guidelines for Using External Web 2.0 Services supplied by Edinburgh University. and spoke authoritatively about the institution’s use of remote Web 2.0 services and the risks involved in this, especially in terms of compliance with the Data Protection Act. Interestingly, the ‘back-channel’ at the symposium, populated primarily perhaps by people likely to be passionate about new technology, tended to dismiss some of Chris’s points. I felt that some participants either didn’t realise, or didn’t care that Chris was describing risks to the institution.

Once we got past the recession at the end of the dot-com bubble in the first years of this century, the notion of an open-source operating system had reached a level of sufficient maturity for it to enter the mainstream. Web 2.0 services and SaaS as a viable, mainstream approach will likely reach similar levels of maturity in time. But perhaps now, more than ever, institutions need to make sober appraisals of their options for service delivery or procurement.

After all, no one wants to be made to look like an idiot!

Tags: Google, SaaS