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Loading ...This Tuesday’s TechCrunch Geek n Rolla event included a presentation by Joe Drumgoole, “get of of my cloud.” It probably steered between too technical for non-tech folks and not technical enough for the techies. Launching a start up on a cloud infrastructure makes good economic sense – it’s a success-based cost model. The same holds true for start up projects inside of larger businesses.
However, Joe advised some caution, per transaction costs can kill you (this is ironic given that the concept of “Free” – so popular with the Web 2.0 world – is based on infinitely low transaction costs). Remember, with cloud computing, you can’t touch the hardware or see it, so monitoring is more important, he mentioned Nagios and Monitis which are great packages for doing just that.
Another big issue with Cloud Computing is the data problem – it takes a while to get data up, even if you have lots of bandwidth. That means it takes a while to get your data out in a hurry. You also have to deal with high latency, compared to working with servers on site.
The dynamics of programing in the cloud is transaction based, so you need to be thinking dollars. Poor programming costs you real money, so unit tests need to include a cost value. Security also needs to be at the forefront of what you do. Joe described the “The Britney Spears Problem “- you can’t expose your end user data to risk. Client side encryption will be needed in the long-term, but is a usability challenge right now.
In summary cloud computing is a great adjunct, but don’t get rid of your main servers just yet. Be ready to deploy to any other grid at speed, so that you have a recovery plan. Also, watch those transaction costs.
Here is a talk on Cloud Computing by Larry Ellison (of Oracle – who are set to acquire Sun):
Hi Benjamin,
Thanks for your comments. It is hard to find the right middle ground and cram enough relevant information into 15 minutes.
As regards Larry’s comments, well suffice to say that Oracle doesn’t have any credible cloud computing offerings despite spending a lot of money on its still born OnDemand efforts.
Cloud Computing is,
o Virtualised infrastructure (storage, compute, queueing, entity store, content distribution). This means it can all be configured by software.
o Unbounded access to resources
o Pay as your go/Pay as you use access to those resources
o The ability to scale down as easily as you scale up