Category Archives: Basic Views

EaaS: Everything as a Service – The next big buzzword?

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When we try to use or promote technologies or technological paradigms we must start by digging up all the information about it. This is almost mandatory and it’s the basis of all the work done by the majority of us. The information obtained must help create a clear and broad view about the new field of work. And consequently, the resulting view would help create solutions, products or promotional work.

This is fundamental and without it you won’t be able to create solutions with the most basic feature – interoperability. Without it, we (IT members, entrepreneurs, etc) will also loose the ability to vertically scale up our ideas in our company, or even to be successful when trying to obtain clients, financing, etc. Furthermore, we end up loosing the ability to talk with each other.
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Web 8.0: previewing an octave above and beyond

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What’s the purpose of cloud computing? By Wikipedia “agreed standards” is

“internet (“cloud”) based development and use of computer technology (“computing”). It is a style of computing in which typically real-time scalable resources are provided “as a service” over the Internet to users who need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure (“in the cloud”) that supports them.” (wikipedia)

On short-run applicability it’s a platform for the embedded information for the future dynamic actions of the Internet of Things’ (wikipedia) gadgets, inside and outside companies. For now it’s a medium for a better comprehension and creation of knowledge, offered by big companies a better and supposedly semi-open and optimized “service” over the internet. Data is there for the grasp of the beholder, what you do with it it’s your responsability and also of the target community. For now the bigger parcel of information content it’s companies propriety, the important “clouds” belong to the shareholders, and each of their knowledge is for the use of each company.
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Cloud it or not to Cloud it – Virtualization

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In my “Cloud it or not to Cloud it” set of posts I’m trying to discuss simple concepts or technologies that must be part of any Cloud Computing migration or study. When I say “simple” I’m referring to those technologies that are nowadays well known and had already the opportunity to be transformed in examples that we can trusty follow.

One of those technologies is Virtualization. Thanks to VMware and other persistent companies, and also thanks to the first IBM CP-40, we have in the time being,  a large group of solutions and business models that have been transforming Virtualization in a reality that must be part of every Datacenter or IT department. The recent developments in the hardware field (AMD-V and INTEL-VT) have also contributed to this Virtualization boom.

So, if you haven’t take a look into this Virtualization reality, you haven’t been able to find out how you can increase your hardware infrastructure utilization, how to increase the availability, or even, how you may increase the elasticity and security of your IT infrastructure.

With Virtualization, together with all this infrastructure optimization,  you may also learn how your applications could behave on the Cloud, in the sense that Virtualization is the core of the majority of clouds. Although we have the Azure example and its one-to-one relationship between a VM [virtual machine] and a physical processor core, in the majority of the Clouds you will not have, at least for the time being, this guaranty.

As it’s discussed in the cloud-computing google groups,  Virtualization issue is not only important in order to have all your infrastructure ready to move to the Cloud, just by copying all your virtual machines images to a service provider, but mostly because with it you will be able to acknowledge how you could be forced to redesign or re-engineer your applications, or even the complete IT infrastructure. This redesigning scenario could be the only way to get real benefit from this new Virtualization world, and then, get all the benefits of the Cloud.

If you still haven’t  started, try this examples:

Why are we so afraid to move to the Cloud?

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Every remembrance that I have from a usual visit to my bank in the nineties, when I had started managing my own (small) bank account, always begins with a large standing queue.  But, suddenly, everything changed, and my dark remembrances were transformed into an “easy as click” sensation.

This new “click experiences” didn’t  have an easy start as I now remember it. In the begining, I had the same doubts and fears as everyone had. To have private information on the Web, especially the one’s regarding financial situation,  accessible to everyone, was a “terrifying” sensation. This “terrifying” sensation was always in opposition to the excitement of having a powerful personal finance managing application, and more, an application that we could used everywhere and on every scenarios – being on vacation and have the possibility to pay a bill that we had forgotten; making a last hour stock action’s investment; make a bank transfer to a friend; etc.

Those scenarios were, in fact,  very exciting, but as I vividly remember, the fear from losing the control over this new powerful application, and consequently, lose the control of our personal finances was always evermore present.

And how did this end? How has this incremental fear stopped? The answer is obviously not simple, but definitely, it must be related with reputation and trust links, I’ve already talked about that in a previous post. In this example, the solid reputation that the banks had,  together with a large development in security technologies,  were fundamental to create the trust links and to allow a phenomenal development in the home banking applications field.

And now, why are we so afraid to move to the Cloud? Why don’t we let ourselves be embraced by the power of having all our applications on the Web, not only our personal finances’ application, but all of them? My simple answer is: We don’t know what is the Cloud, or even, what is the Cloud is made of.

We must first realise that the Cloud is a group of services providers, like our bank an its home bank application. We must realise that, and then wait to see how these new service providers will construct their reputation and  how that reputation will be able to enhance our trust feeling.

I can now say that we should consider home banking as pre-historical Cloud Computing and an example to follow.

PS:
We are in an era where the banks’ reputation is not what it was back then, although this is completely out of the scope of this post, I think that this is something that will change. It must. Without this thing called reputation we won’t have the trust that has made possible this pre-historical Cloud Computing…