Comments on: Is Cloud Computing a Trap?

By: Alex Fatkulin

Alex Fatkulin — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 04:04:18 +0000

Sheeri, I believe Noons was talking about what is known as transfer pricing. It is one of the main reasons why independent companies are sometimes less price competitive compared to their vertically integrated competitors.

It has to do with the way fixed/variable costs are passed in each case.

By: Sheeri Cabral

Sheeri Cabral — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:58:31 +0000

BTW, I wrote about the cloud computing/privacy column 2 months ago in http://www.pythian.com/blogs/1143/open-source-what-you-own

By: Cloud Computing? « Oracle and other

Cloud Computing? « Oracle and other — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:34:54 +0000

[…] Questo argomento mi ha ricordato anche un altro post di Sheeri Cabral che lessi tempo fa su pythian: “Open Source: What You Own“, l’argomento mi sembra pertinente. Mentre scrivevo questo post ho notato che sempre su pythian anche Paul Vallee ne parla (”Is Cloud Computing a Trap?“). […]

By: Khurt

Khurt — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:42:38 +0000

As long as I can move my data around from service to service, or link data in one service to another service, or use one service to transform data another service .. there will be value in “Cloud Computing”.

Is is possible to get locked in? Certainly. But I can avoid using those services and use the one that allow me to do the things I want with my data.

What’s the alternative? I can do what some one my friends do. They run their own email, DNS, web, directory, database etc … I don’t have time to install/support all that infrastructure. I am too busy getting stuff done.

Maybe Richard would like to volunteer to help us host our own photos and blog. In the meantime, I will keep using Flickr and Wordpress.

By: Jay Pipes

Jay Pipes — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:06:01 +0000

Vide, you fail to account for the fact that in-house hosting is likely less reliable than cloud computing, so arguments over “loosing” (sic) data are hogwash IMHO. Now, “finer control over data”, that may indeed be the case, but there is, of course, nothing preventing a company from simply using cloud utility computing for offloading peak hour traffic and doing most everything else in-house, or even using cloud-computing as a backup or failover service, which makes your argument less convincing.

I’ll agree that there is *considerable* marketing hype over cloud computing, but then again, there’s considerable hype over almost everything nowadays. The challenge is to cut through the hype and glean from the technology those things which make sense for your business specifically, and ditch the rest of it :)

Cheers,

Jay

By: Vide

Vide — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:00:39 +0000

@Jonathan: don’t you think that in the long run you are going to pay MORE for the service than in-house? Today everyone is going mad for externalization (just as they did with call centr and software development in the past years). But when people, even if protected by a SLA, start to loose their data or their fine control over it, and managers start to understand that, we’ll see company going back to more in-house computing (as we’re seeing production coming back to its original places when it makes sense).
And this is just talking about pure money.. if we put the “freedom” condition in it, then Stallman’s thoughts are not so bizarre

By: Sheeri Cabral

Sheeri Cabral — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:47:57 +0000

Stallman is correct, but as Arjen notes, the fact that cloud computing is handing information off to someone else for a price is not unique to cloud computing. Gmail and Flickr are locked, proprietary systems that are free.

Noons says that hosting inhouse means you pay once, which is misleading — you pay for the hardware once, but you pay for power, network connectivity, air conditioning, lighting, etc. monthly. And of course system and database administrators to maintain the systems, but you’d have those in the case of a hosted service too.

Of course Ellison is playing dumb, he wants people to buy his own, recently released grid computing solution. If Ellison is so clueless….

…why does he think is Oracle partnering with Intel to “Accelerate Enterprise-Ready Cloud Computing”??
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/017548_EN.doc

…is the Oracle Cloud Computing Center, which mentions their partnership with Amazon Web Services, a joke?
http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/cloud/index.html

There are some interesting points here:
http://gevaperry.typepad.com/main/2008/09/oracle-and-cloud-computing-funny.html
such as how Oracle software isn’t really suitable for the cloud.

This article:
http://www.crn.com/software/210603480
states that Oracle’s “Chuck Rozwat, executive vice president of development….sees cloud a computing as an outgrowth of the on-demand computing technology Oracle has been working on for 10 years.”

Does Ellison need to spend less time on his boats and more time in tune with what his own company is doing?

By: Arjen Lentz

Arjen Lentz — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:03:19 +0000

Look it doesn’t have to be someone else’s cloud. But anyway, many sites run hosted or somewhat managed, that’s ok. This is, essentially, not different. Of course it does depend on the infrastructure. Reality is, whatever choices are made, nobody is that easily portable, there’s always a degree of lock-in. That’s one of the trade-offs when outsourcing this.

By: Noons

Noons — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:39:51 +0000

The difference with SaaS is that you pay EVERY month, while if you host inhouse you pay once….

By: Jonathan Levin

Jonathan Levin — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:21:28 +0000

I thought that the reasons for using cloud computing are more from a hardware consideration then software ones.
For example, you can use salesforce and pay a certain amount every month instead of installing servers in several locations AND pay for someone to install and maintain them AND pay for backup tapes and software AND someone to manage and maintain firewall and active directory policies…. etc ect