Computing in Turmoil

There are several high visibility changes happening recently in the computing scene. Some time back Cisco announced their entry into computing server scene. They supply network infrastructure anyway. So the bid is for a complete offering for the data centers that support the corporate computing environment or the cloud computung as the case may be.

The we had IBM trying to acquire SUN and trying to get into the data server space with that. This mating ritual went on for some time and then eventually Sun rejected the overture. Now comes the news Oracle has acquired SUN. Oracle too seem to be positioning for a fairly integrated offering (except networking hardware).

While all this is happening comes a report from a reputed analyst that cloud computing costs are not all that cheap! It can actually be more expensive than in-house computing. That throws a spanner into the economical justification for going over to the cloud completely. There was that issue about some major players disowning the cloud computing manifesto.

It would really be interesting to keep watching and see how things stabilize.

Cloud Over The Cloud Manifesto

There has been a bit of a bruhaha about the original cloud manifesto coming out.Looks like the basic tenets the original thinkers wanted to follow was of complete openness. Given that there are some inherent advantages in that paradigm of computing, also that several vendors are offering services on the cloud, the real ground swell of a revolution has not started yet.

One of the issue holding back customers has been the concern about security. I remember, the earlier avatar, the ASP model or the application service provider died off because of this kind of concern. The fact that the earlier recession had arrived the round the 2000-2001 did not help either. it simply got clubbed into the sad "bubble burst" phenomenon.

This time vendor lock-in also is a concern. The manifesto talks about not getting tangled into this issue and keeping things really open. And controversies have started. Some original participants have disowned the manifesto. Is it that they see a lock-in opportunity! That would really be short sighted. What needs to be done is a concerted push by all vendors to address the data security concerns rather than trying to protect teritorries.