Category Archives: Basic Views

Is this Cloud thing something new?

Posted on by
Reply

For my first post here I going to answer this question (sort of):

To be honest I was skeptical about Cloud Computing:
Having seen in that in the past some acronyms and hypes showing up I think its natural.
One of them was Ajax. Ajax is just creating one word to sum a bunch of technologies: (X)HTML + DOM + CSS + Javascript. Don’t get me wrong, I think that we need the acronyms, they are useful for communication but they don’t necessary add anything new.

One other acronym that I found interesting was ASP (Application Service Provider). ASP at first seemed to me just a way to say that we would sell our same desktop applications as a service. It was not a new technology, a new application or a new standard but just a new revenue model. Was this a small change? At first I thought so, but then I realized that this was a shift from the normal way of doing things and that opened the door for new companies that started building applications from scratch for the internet.
At that time someone (don’t remember who) called this new companies ASP2. This acronym had a short life (thankfully!) and the term Software as a Service (and the acronym SaaS) appeared.

Affer SaaS, other related acronyms started to pop up: SaaS, HaaS, PaaS, etc. and for me personally I need to figure out if they are bringing something new. In the future I will write something about them.

Right now I’m interest in writing about Could Computing. So what is it? Is just a new name?
For me Could Computing is more than just a new name, its again an interesting shift from the normal way we currently developed and sell software. This new term is not just the sum of several technologies but a change of paradigm that brings a lot of questions with it: What new applications will it bring? What new revenue models will appear? How will developers use it and how will they adapt? Will customers see any benefits? Who will be the big players in this field?

Bellow you can see some links that show some useful information about the Cloud:
- Demystifying Cloud Computing (sent by Paulo)
- Cloud in Plain English
- Cloud computing

Cloud Computing – The Internet becomes our computer

Posted on by
1

Cloud Computing is a new paradigm (concept or model) that uses all the computing power and new technologies that Internet makes available nowadays. Until recently, all this power and technologies were used in a disarticulated way and without focusing their deployment strategies in the users’ needs.

In the beginning, in the Tim Berners Lee’s Web, the rule (the only available option) was to build static sites, without any kind of interaction or users contribution. Nowadays all things are different, “modern” Internet users, more than just plain consumers, want to be producers and critics. Interacting and sharing as wasn’t possible until now. They want to be part of the Web and they want the Web as part of themselves.

This change in users’ behavior, this demand of interaction potentialities and, at the same time, the demand of share capabilities, are forcing the service providers to develop more advance and user centric technologies. Internet users are also changing the way they use the Internet, they are adjusting their behavior to this technology’s change, and they are learning to use Web pages as ordinary desktop applications.

The term “Cloud Computing ” take us to the idea of a large cloud that bring us services in the same way that our personal computer does, but just as a real cloud, which navigates through the sky, this new term also presents a freedom that, nowadays, we just don’t have. Our computer is no longer stuck “between four walls” or inside of a suitcase that we religiously transport. With Cloud Computing we are able to have all our files, our programs, available everywhere. The Internet becomes our computer.

Our programs are available just like as a service, there is no longer the need to install or update we just simply use. Web pages become powerful daily work tools and their access, their maintenance is guaranteed by a service provider.

For companies, Cloud Computing enlarges this concept providing a whole development platform of housing and computing services. Companies Datacenters are no longer between walls to be in the cloud. This paradigm allows a costs reduction, increasing the availability and the quality of the services…

Cloud Computing: why not just call it WEB 2.0

Posted on by
Reply

WEB 2.0 (or Read-Write-Web, or…), being most of all a boom in technology development and a change in the users’ behavior, that’s far from the whole, Cloud Computing brings what was missing: users’ interface homogenization, interoperability, better access control and Identity management, business models, etc. All this things are part of other paradigms, concepts and technologies, but Cloud Computing tries to group everything in a concise and clear way.