Monday, January 31, 2011

Overloaded to Death, “Cloud” Computing is Dead

by Adron via Composite Code on 1/31/2011 2:53:44 PM

I've gotten to a point where I won't argue it anymore. The word Cloud as defined on Wikipedia "location-independent computing, whereby shared servers provide resources, software, and data tocomputers and other devices on demand, as with the electricity grid. Cloud computing is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualization, service-oriented architecture and utility computing. Details are abstracted from consumers, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them." has been overloaded to such a large degree that it doesn't actually mean anything anymore. Cloud computing has become a casualty of marketing hype. Utility computing, service oriented architecture, virtualization, and other things still have meaning, but cloud computing really is lost. We have cloud services in Office 365, which isn't particularly stored or operated from the cloud. We have vertically distributed, geographically dependent databases & other services with are called cloud, but also don't meet the basic definition above. We have private cloud computing, which also is a perversion of the definition above. Basically the term cloud has been stuck onto anything technology related. Your phone, your website, your car, your everything is now all of a sudden supposed to be provided by the cloud. In laymen's terms, "The cloud is bullshit."