Awareness of Cloud Computing continues to increase

[Phild1973]

Hi all,

Very interesting special report from industry analyst Gartner about the continuing awareness and growth of cloud computing into the mainstream. A great read for all business owners.

http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=168582&ref=g_sitelink&ref=g_noreg

As the owner of a cloud computing business I am really interested in learning what the forum members understanding and experiences are with cloud (or hosted IT) SaaS services?

What are your queries, fears or objections?

Phil

 

[scothost]

Personally I am not getting involved in cloud at the moment. The cloud race is still on and the result as always is too many people without the right technical knowledge really understanding what it is they are offering and how to both support the customer and manage their hardware.

Take a look around on the big forums and it's laughable the way people are trying to push cloud hosting.

For once this is a hosting market on its own which appeals to a narrower and less naieve customer base and for that reason your product needs to be right. Cloud is cloud, it's you and your flavour of cloud that will entice the customers.

 

[3 MORE YEARS]

I agree with Phil. I find more and more small businesses are aware of Cloud Computing and they are asking about it.

Ryan

 

[rattytattydesigns]

I did try to read the article, but got lost straight away. I didn't want to hit all the links. why couldn't he ref the other articles but tell us WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING.

Do I really need to know this
I thought computers were to make things easier (LOL) I don't believe that anymore, but I do feel that there are loads of people out there taking advantage of the fact that most of us have no idea what most of this means, and then telling us we should know, and need to know, and we can pay them to do it for us.

I don't begrude people earning money from computer technology, but I really widh there was a way of knowing what we really need, without having to have the latest it degree

 

[scothost]

Your right, it's not easy to know what you need, but just because something new comes along does not mean its out with the old. People who made the initial jump to cloud are runing back to their reseller or VPS, simply because Cloud is no better for them but convinced only as its something new and must be better right? Wrong

Not wanting to pick on Ryan here but as you posted about it and have a link I went to your site.

First thing I done was a whois on your domain, checked where your hosted and so on. Then your site, it tells me little and convinces me in no way that cloud would even be a consideration for me, and I know what it is, so what about someone with a slight interest?

Granted not everyone will do what I will but my point is that the people/firms that want this service will be more likely to check you out first.

 

[garyk]

theres another long thread about on here recently which is worth a read. Gotta love gartner, charge top dollar for white papers stating the bleedin' obvious!

 

[3 MORE YEARS]

theres another long thread about on here recently which is worth a read. Gotta love gartner, charge top dollar for white papers stating the bleedin' obvious!

I agree they are stating the obvious.

scothost, pick on me. I don't mind. I have been here long enough to not to take it personally, to turn discussions into serious arguments.

If you do whois, you will see that domain is less than a month old I think, and it's also a temp wordpress until a proper site is put together. We have a lot of domains and website. It's on my signature just for indexing purposes not to promote it at this point as it's not ready.

I don't believe is people wasting money on technology that they don't need. But I walk the walk...I won't recommend something to clients if I don't use it or I am not a big believer in it. 90% of the software that I use is a SAAS. Very little that we use is a local install.

I have no more to say, as I don't want to extent the discussion.

 

[stugster]

Cloud's nothin new. It's just grid with a new sexy name. New marketing brings the boys to the club.

 

[ecenica]

I agree with the view that popularity of mobile web devices like iPhone, Android and iPad will passivley push users toward cloud computing as they seek ways of going beyond their devices built-in storage.

Google Docs, Soundcloud, DropBox, Twitter, Youtube are all good examples.

As to our deployment. Weve been using one of the first cloud storage/computing environments for offsite backups from day-1, and it's proven extremely reliable.

 

[garyk]

slightly ot, nice shiny new logo Stu!

 

[Doug]

Could the mods merge the threads on this pls as it seems to be a hot topic.

My own experience is partnering with some well established companies who have spent a very large amount (10s of millions) on their data centres and build in really high SLAs, have back up data centres acting as redundancy.

Do we think smaller companies will be able to compete with this? I am not an expert on the security measures used by any means but I wonder if a smaller company hosting in their office (or similar) will be as attractive as using a hosting provider who have invested a huge amount of money.
This isnt an attack on smaller hosting companies at all, I am really just curious to find out.
If I was looking at a hosting provider, as long as they can demonstrate security and reliability, and the product did what I needed, I would be happy no matter the size.

I think for a lot of people the security of data is a massive concern when passing data to an external source.

For people that are skeptic, SaaS when done right has so many benefits over on premise. Totally removes the need to buy a server on which to run software, and these need updating every 5 years! Installation cost is dramatically reduced. Data can be in some cases more secure than having it on your inhouse server and depending on the supplier the service can be more reliable.
It's not for everyone, but if you can go SaaS and get the same product it at least makes sense to consider it properly.

 

[ecenica]

Adding to our earlier post.

One thing that stopped us from using one of the big clouds was that we were unable to configure reverse PTR records - making them useless for mail servers.

Agree. Security is a big concern and one reason why we're protective over the cloud services we use for data-storage.

 

[rkallit]

Cloud computing adoption is going strong among businesses, with SaaS being the clear winner. In coming days, many more companies would implement cloud computing in conjunction with some on-premise solution. The future of IT infrastructure is in hybrid & converged infrastructure.

Issues like protection & transparency needs some critical protocols for cloud computing to really take off...

Thanks

 

[Optegris]

Interesting to here people thoughts especially as I will be launching our cloud hosting service within the next few weeks.

I spent an extraordinary amount of time researching the various platforms, talking to providers etc to make sure the offering I put together was solid and viable.

Granted that the cloud is just a sexy name for a VPS but it does go a little deeper than that. The thing is though is that the majority of my clients don't care about the technical nitty gritty, they just want a service that works...

 

[kate1]

One of the problems we come across, is people trying to get their head round how it works.

 

[Optegris]

Took me a day or two to grasp the technical side so yes I can appreciate that

 

[kate1]

With regards to data, alot of people think its stored on the actual phone. Security issues too, I think people find it harder to entrust their data to somebody else.

 

[Optegris]

On the phone? Are you talking about IMAP email?

 

[kate1]

Ohhh knew I shouldnt have replied to this post. I do the sales, so Im not horrendously technical, I just sell the concept.

We manage data with regards to people in the service industry, scheduling, payments etc.

Ducking now incase anymore too technical questions come my way, lol

 

[Optegris]

Nah it's OK I was referring to cloud hosting or the provisioning of VPS server in a cloud...

 

[kate1]

phew - can breathe again!

 

[Phild1973]

I'm enjoying this thread now!

Lots of great points made. It's been the same with all "new computing concepts" for 25 years. I remember when broadband and gigabit were just a pipedream. With every new concept comes a boom of so called experts and opportunists! Thankfully many dissapear and many more of the decent ones end up merged or swallowed up by larger competitors.

One thing that often seperates them is technical expertise!

From the outset Cloud4's very strong technical team with a combined 45 years experience had a design remit. To create rebust, secure services that take the market leading solutions and improve on them... For less! And to build the infrastructure in the best datacentres, replicated for failover across the other datacentres!

We have only realeased services to market when we are confident they do exactly what they say on the tin and provide immediate benefits to the user!

It's still earlier days for cloud computing (which yes is the new buzzword for something thats been around in various states for year) with gartner recently reporting that "cloud has another decade to mature". But make no mistake this is the next global shift in how the world will compute!

 

[Dominic Taylor]

I developed a cloud shared hosting system as a side project, ended up with about 12 VDSs and it ran very nicely and was very straightforward to do. If we end up with 30hr days it might make it to production but until then, cPanel it is!

'Cloud' for SaaS is where it has most meaning for me. Not that I'm a fan of handing over my data to a third party, so perhaps I'm more a fan of hosted private clouds where I'm the only user on the rented space eg Amazon EC2.

It'll be an exciting few years I think. Yes, it's a terrible buzzword, but the main point is the commoditisation (if it's not too late/early for that word...) of computing power to provide easy provisioning of reliable services to clients for low cost. Which is the holy grail of every single provider in every industry.

Of course 'cloud' isn't the solution to everything and there are all sorts of things to look at when considering.

But then - as I always say on this - I got the lowest mark in the distributed computing module I did at uni so perhaps I should skip back to networking where I got the highest mark (92% for CCNA tho you could train a monkey to do that in a week...around 80% on CCNP modules however ). Apparently my cloud answer was too business-focused (shock horror) rather than tech details

 

[kate1]

Yes I agree, very interesting thread

 

[garyk]

It's still earlier days for cloud computing (which yes is the new buzzword for something thats been around in various states for year) with gartner recently reporting that "cloud has another decade to mature". But make no mistake this is the next global shift in how the world will compute!

Actually cloud computing has been around for over 30 years!!!

I remember at upper school before we got our first computer, yep the school invested in a sole research machines 380Z, we used to use a usr33 teletype. Which is how Mr gates et al started out, using a dumb terminal to connect to a device in the cloud using a modem (the sort you actually took the phone handset off and stuffed into), an ibm mainframe and pay for the amount of processing time used.

Funny how things *haven't* changed really.

Gary

 

[dagaul101]

Funny how things that might seem ancient haven't changed that much, taking the phone off to connect to the net is still how it's done for many people

 

[Phild1973]

But then - as I always say on this - I got the lowest mark in the distributed computing module I did at uni so perhaps I should skip back to networking where I got the highest mark (92% for CCNA tho you could train a monkey to do that in a week...around 80% on CCNP modules however ). Apparently my cloud answer was too business-focused (shock horror) rather than tech details

DOnt you just love how education has its finger on the pulse of the real world of commerce lol.!

 

[DuaneJackson]

I'd be interested if people on this thread could give a 2-3 sentence defining "cloud". From what I've read just on this thread people seem to have conflicting ideas. SaaS has been mentioned too - somehow interchangably with "cloud"

Is a hosted application SaaS? Even if it doesn't pass the Touring Test? IE, if I stick Office or some other software on a server and sell access to it for which you need RDP or Citrix, is that SaaS?

If a web-based application, delivered as pure SaaS and multi-tenanted, runs on dedicated hardware and not virtualised, elastic servers - is it still "cloud"?

 

[garyk]

For me Duane cloud means pay per use like amazon ec2 model and Microsoft azure.

SaaS is like Kashflow where the fee is set each month regardless of usage.

 

[KM-Tiger]

I'd be interested if people on this thread could give a 2-3 sentence defining "cloud".

Why bother to define what is just marketing hype? To do so is to cloud (Sorry!) the fundamental questions which an IT-enabled business should be asking:

Where is the business data stored?

Where do users need to access that data from?

What do they need in order to work with that data?

Those questions are interrelated and each needs to be expanded, eg with data storage then backup and DR are important sub-questions.

To answer those questions for most real businesses then a mixture of solutions is likely according to need, whether you call them Cloud, Saas, or whatever. But noticeable trends are:

• Users wanting/needing to access and work with data anywhere, which points to storage somewhere in a DC, rather than the traditional office server.
• Thin client technology (which is what delivery in a web browser is really) to make working with data device independent.

 

[kate1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae_DKNwK_ms

 

[DuaneJackson]

Why bother to define what is just marketing hype?

Without defining our terms then this is a pointless thread.

 

[stugster]

Without defining our terms then this is a pointless thread.

Not really. Define it properly as grid-computing and you're onto a winner. Define the marketing hype and you'll just get bogged down in marketing speak rather than technical details.

 

[benstege]

My 2 pence. Yes, the term Cloud Computing has been adopted for marketing but really, it is just cloud because the web always used to be symbolised as a cloud by techies and marketing people alike. I do try to avoid the term as it is being misused so much, but at least it rings some bells with people (see my signature ).

The simplest explanation:
Cloud Computing is a general term for using IT functions via your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox) instead of from software installed on your PC or server.

A bit more techie addition:
Your IT functions and data will be hosted by companies such as Microsoft, Google or Amazon who run large computer centres all over the world, hooked up to the Internet.

You can make all sorts of inclusions and exclusions but then you will end up with a gartner size definition for something that really isn't a technical suject at all. If you want a short explanation with pros and cons I wrote a very short blog article a while back to explain Cloud C.

 

[4little1s]

thanks Cumulus IT, liked the 1 min overview.

 

[daveTwizzlebird]

The biggest opportunities for a small web design firm like mine are in scaleability. I could develop a web app using amazon web services that could be a global smash and I wouldn't have to fork out for any considerable initial infrastructure. The PAYG model is a huge enabler for smaller scale enterprise to go global.

 

[garyk]

The simplest explanation:
Cloud Computing is a general term for using IT functions via your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox) instead of from software installed on your PC or server.

Just to muddy the water (!) its not always browser based. You can run software that you install locally that still connects to the cloud, typically called 'smart client' software. Its the delivery of data mechanism, not the client software.