Is Google Chromebook the ultimate Cloud laptop?

So the next obvious question to be asked is – why would you want a Chromebook running a Chrome OS rather than an Android tablet or iPad for that matter? Furthermore, if the Chrome browser is becoming Android‘s default browser in version 4, as has been hinted, it puts an even bigger question mark behind the Chromebook, doesn‘t it? Not so according to Google, which rightly point to competitors that also maintain two OS’s, including Microsoft Windows and Windows Phone 7. Apple has Mac OS x and iOS.

CloudComputingTopics

Google Cloud Drive Storage Rumoured

Search giant Google is reportedly working on a new cloud-based storage platform called Drive which will aim to go toe to toe with rivals like Dropbox and even Apple`s iCloud.Google has been a major proponent of cloud computing services and it is hoping that Drive will allow it to expand in this market, offering users an alternative to the established platforms on which they can deposit files and folders to retrieve at a later date.

CloudComputingTopics

The rise of hybrid clouds

It seems that many analysts, e.g. at the Cloud Computing Journal, are proclaiming that private and hybrid clouds will see a real proliferation in 2010. Security concerns of public clouds are still prevailing and many IT professionals and managers are still very reluctant to the idea of migrating private enterprise data and operations to a public cloud provider. Deploying cloud computing on-premise, in a private cloud fashion, is seen as a way to exploit many of the benefits from cloud computing, i.e. automation, centralization and elasticity, without the security risks still lurking around in public clouds. In private clouds, organizations maintain closer security and compliance controls over their applications and data. In the longer term though, together with increased cloud adoption, managers will probably compare more seriously the cost/benefit analysis of private versus public clouds.

Alternatively, hybrid clouds, seem as a sensible intermediary step between public and private clouds, enabling organizations to leverage  upon both worlds – combining on-demand capacity with in-house compliance.

Implementing a hybrid cloud strategy is simply an attempt to augment a private cloud with the resources of a public cloud in order to maintain acceptable service levels despite spikes in demand, i.e. to address and prevent the so called Cloudbursting (“the failure of a cloud computing environment due to the inability to handle spike in demand”).

Hybrid clouds seem a natural step for enterprises not interested or willing to migrate resources to the public cloud due to security vulnerabilities or otherwise. Getting their feet wet in the cloud without risking too much, hybrids clouds may offer a beneficial alternative for dealing with temporary spikes in demand, lowering capital costs and offer the elasticity desired.

2010 – the year of Cloud catastrophes?

As more companies offer cloud computing services and the number of users increase, statistics tell us that the likelihood of a serious problem occurring, for example, somewhere in the  transfer network or in different security segments, increases. We have already seen some serious ‘outages’ in the past, such at Magnolia, the social bookmarking site that crashed and lost all its data earlier this year. Will 2010 be the year of some disastrous encounters for cloud computing?

Some analysts are predicting 2010 to be the year of catastrophes for cloud computing cloud computing, including the CEO of Strategic News Service, Mark Anderson, in an interview with BusinessWeek. He believes that the increasing reliability toward Cloud services could actually backfire in the form of a serious service outage or security based catastrophe. And, the disaster could be big enough to question the dependability of Cloud services by corporations in particular.

My believe it that although we might possibly see some serious outages or security breaches encounter, the long-term benefit of network delivered services will outweigh the risks of organisations continue to deploy and migrate to cloud based services. Clearly, organisations and IT managers must carefully select the right type of resources or applications to transfer to the cloud with regard to their mission-critical nature and sensitivity. If using a public cloud provider seems too risky in terms of security or availability, another option would be to migrate to a private (or hybrid) cloud.

Cloud computing characteristics

There is a great deal of ambiguity around cloud computing and no agreed definition still exists, although many have provided their own understanding of cloud based services and technologies  A recent, and very readable, webtutorial report (Nov. 2009) called “A Guide For Understanding Cloud Computing” by Dr. Jim Metzler makes a clear attempt to define the  characteristics of cloud computing and its boundaries. Firstly, it answers the question of cloud computing primary objective as “to make a dramatic improvement in the cost effective elastic provisioning of IT services“. Secondly, it identifies eleven (or twelve) primary characteristics of a cloud computing solution:

• Centralization – applications, servers, storage
• Virtualization – including servers, storage, networks, desktops, etc
• Automation – provisioning, troubleshooting, configuration
• Dynamic movement of resources – such as virtual machines and storage
• Internet reliance – extensive use of the internet for deployment and service provisioning
• Self-service – users can select, configure and modify resources and services themselves online
• Pay-as-you-go – user pay for consuming the service, no or minimum up-front fees
• Simplification – fewer versions running, less IT resource complexity for organizations
• Standardization – users gain access to standardized applications and hardware resources, fewer vendors
• Technology convergence – enabling convergence of multiple technologies such as servers, networks, storage, etc.
• Federation through standardization – with standardization comes the federation of disparate cloud computing infrastructures

This is an interesting list that provide a comprehensive picture of what characterizes cloud computing. Some of the characteristics are obviously more developed than others. Centralization and virtualization, for example, are already becoming mature and established technologies for enabling economical cloud computing services, while standards are largely still missing and federation of cloud computing infrastructures is still somewhat further ahead and is, of course, strongly linked to and dependent upon available standards. Still it’s a good idea to keep these in mind when you need to identify whether a service is cloud computing, or not.

Status of the cloud computing hype!

It seems that cloud computing is nearing the top of the hype-cycle according to “Gartner’s Hype Cycle Special Report for 2009“. Gartner claims that within the next 5 years, most enterprises will utilize cloud computing as a more economical alternative for running their IT resources, compared to on-premise resource management. Not only does this apply to migrating IT resources like network servers, databases and storage to the public cloud utilizing “Infrastructure-as-a-Service” (IaaS) services, but also private clouds and hybrid clouds. Equally, enterprises will increasingly adopt “Software-as-a-Service” (SaaS) services instead of running business applications locally. We’ve already seen successes in this direction – Salesforce CRM of course being the foremost example.

Another report from The Economist, Let It Rise – A special report on corporate IT, points to a similar direction. Public cCloud providers are improving their offerings. IaaS providers like Amazon AWS and Go-Grid are continuously announcing new corporate-class services and addressing many of the security vulnerabilities associated with public cloud computing. Not only are public cloud providers improving their services, but are also adding new services extending corporate networks into the cloud through Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections or even through MPLS. A good example of the former is the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud and Verizon has started offering cloud services, termed Verizon Computing-as-a-Service (CaaS), over their private IP network (MPLS network) in selected areas.