What the Hell is Cloud Computing?

The following link from PrudentCloud leads to a collection of You Tube videos on the definition of Cloud Computing as seen by various industry leaders. I particularly like the one from Larry Ellison of Oracle fame. If you watch all the videos, you will see that Cloud Computing means different things to different people.

My own take on Cloud Computing is based on my experience of working in the ‘Cloud’ space for over ten years. Back in 2000, I was Operations Director for an Application Service Provider (ASP) who towards the middle of the decade, rebranded their product range as Software as a Service (SaaS). Although, the same company is not yet publicly marketing themselves as cloud provider, their competitors are so I am sure it will only be a matter of time. Not surprisingly, the part of their solution that could be called ‘Cloud’, i.e. the delivery method to the client, is exactly the same as it was when the company was an ASP or SaaS provider.

The same seems to be true for ISP/hosting providers. In 1998 I as able to rent web space that would run perl scripts and interface onto a MySQL database (I think it was MySQL), also hosted by the ISP. The pricing model was based on resource utilisation; disk space and bandwidth. Such a service certainly seems to fit into the Cloud Computing definition. The offerings on today’s market are somewhat more advanced but the underlying architecture and pricing model is more or less the same.

Hence, from my perspective, Cloud Computing is more marketing than innovation but as it opens up a whole range of possible Cloud Computing security consultancy opportunities, I probably shouldn’t complain too much.