The High Scalability blog today posted a great list of various Cloud Computing blogs currently available. If you are looking for a single source of Cloud Computing information, I definitely recommend looking at Todd Huff’s solid list.

The post is located here.

His post is broken down into specific Categories: Meta Sources and Specific Blogs. I’m sure that these will grow over time. Currently there are 5 Meta Source listings (obvious ones there include the Google Groups on Cloud Computing) and a good group of Specific blogs. Some of the Specific Blog highlights that I think are important ones to look at are:

• Randy Bias’s Neo Tactics: State of the Art for Startups.
• Nicholas Carr’s Roughtype : Author of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World From Edison to Google.
• John Willis’ IT Management and Cloud Blog: Personal comments and podcasts.
• Reuven Cohen’s ElasticVapor Blog. The ramblings of Reuven Cohen, co-Founder & CTO Enomaly Inc.
• http://Blog.RightScale.com: Cloud Computing. Delivered.

The GoGrid blog was included in the list (Thanks Todd).

I would like to add a few more that I personally read that others may find as useful resources:

• Nati Shalom’s Blog: Discussions about middleware and distributed technologies
• ZDNet.com Virtually Speaking: about virtualization with Dan Kusnetzky & Paula Rooney
• Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds: Real-time market analysis & research on Cloud Computing
• Appistry Blogs: At the convergence of Grid Computing, Virtualization and SOA

Feel free to post some comments with any other good Cloud Computing blogs out there. For those that want to cheat, you can always do a quick “Cloud Computing” blog search on Google or Technorati.

I have been working on a Cloud Computing presentation that provides a basic overview of the technology and how it (and GoGrid) fits into the marketplace. While this presentation  continues to evolve (as does the Cloud) and will subsequently undergo other iterations, I felt that many readers might find the content to be useful and informative so I’m publishing it for commentary, compliments and criticism. It also further develops the concept of the “Cloud Pyramid” and offers additional segmentation of the Cloud Computing space.

GoGrid CEO John Keagy has been presenting this at various conferences and meetings. If you are interested in having John present to your organization, please let us know. The presentation continues to evolve, representing our current thinking on Cloud Computing. We hope you enjoy it. Send us your comments!

This insightful post on the RightScale blog recently got me thinking. The term “Cloud Computing” is much too vague. People want and need “slots” or “segments” where they can group things. This is how the mind operates through categorization and ordering. So, to possibly help with this, I would like to propose a “Cloud Pyramid” to help differentiate the various Cloud offerings out there.

There are other ways to display this hierarchy, however I elected to show it as a pyramid. For example, if one were to weight the graphic by the number of providers within each segment, the pyramid would be upside-down. The point here though is to show how these cloud segments build upon and are somewhat dependent upon each other. While they are directly related, they don’t require interdependence (e.g., a Cloud Application does not necessarily have to be built upon a Cloud Platform or Cloud Infrastructure). I would propose, however, that Cloud trends indicate that they will become more entwined over time.

Cloud Application

Within this part of the pyramid, users are truly restricted to only what the application is and can do. Some of the notable companies here are the public email providers (Gmail, Hotmail, Quicken Online, etc.). Almost any Software as a Service (SaaS) provider can be lumped into this group. Most retail consumers use the services within this Cloud. You get pre-defined functionality and you cannot much further than that. Applications are designed for ease of use and GTD (getting things done). SalesForce, a huge Cloud Application/SaaS provider that has led the way for hosted software, falls into this category as well, however, their force.com product does not. Even online banking offerings could be lumped into this group.

Characteristics:

• Strengths
  • Sometimes free; easy to use; lots of different offerings; easy to access; good consumer adoption; proven business models
• Weaknesses
  • You can only use the application as far as what it is designed for; no control or knowledge of underlying technology

Cloud Platforms

As you move further down the pyramid, you gain increased flexibility and control but your a still fairly restricted to what you can and cannot do. Within this Category things get more complicated to achieve. Products and companies like Google App Engine, Heroku, Mosso, Engine Yard, Joyent or force.com (SalesForce platform) fall into this segment. This category is becoming more congested with competitors, many of whom are trying to leverage the Cloud Infrastructure.

Characteristics:

• Strengths
  • Great for developers with a particular niche target, upload a tightly configured applications and it simply “runs”; more control than a Cloud Application
• Weaknesses
  • Restricted to the platform’s ability only; hard to work “outside the box”; sometimes dependant on Cloud Infrastructure providers

Cloud Infrastructure

At the bottom of the pyramid are the infrastructure providers like Amazon’s EC2, GoGrid, RightScale and Linode. Companies providing infrastructure enable Cloud Platforms and Cloud Applications. Most companies within this segment operate their own infrastructure, allowing them to provide more features, services and control than others within the pyramid. And at this foundation level, GoGrid offers infrastructure in the form of both Linux and Windows, load-balancing, and storage. Some Infrastructure providers may leverage others within the space in order to provide competitive viability as well.

Characteristics:

• Strengths
  • Offers full control of server infrastructure; not confined to “containers” or “applications” or restrictive instances
• Weaknesses
  • Sometimes comes with a price premium; infrastructure offerings still being built out

This post is open to discussion! My questions, what do YOU consider to be good examples of each Cloud Category? Can Cloud Computing be broken down into the ones listed above? What segment has been omitted and why do you think it is that way?

Lastly, for a humorous analysis of all of this, take a look a John M Willis’ post “Is Everyone an aaS?” which, in a tongue-in-cheek way, puts it all into perspective.

Everyone seems to be either talking about cloud computing, launching their product “within the cloud” or developing a “cloud” infrastructure. I would like to take a step back and really think about why the word “cloud” is being used in the first place.

First, a quick side note: as I tried to track down the origins of the term “cloud computing” I did come across a very insightful post by Paul Wallis that does a fantastic job stepping through the evolution from “supercomputing” through “the cluster” into “the grid” and eventually up into the “clouds.” The concept of having “data clouds speaking to supercomputer clouds” is becoming a reality, according to Wallis, however, I echo his concern that in order for this magical marriage to take place, there needs to be a new level of Quality of Service connecting the two, among other things.

Even with the foundation being laid by some heavy players, cloud computing is still in its infancy. But this is not the subject of this article. I still circle back to the marketing “genus” that coined the term “cloud” to describe this new computing paradigm. For that, I move away from the technical and more to the linguistic.

The term “cloud” can be used in many forms of speech:

• Noun – The clouds of smoke filled the room
• Verb – The smoke clouded the room
• Adjective – The cloudy smoke filled the room
• Adverb – The smoke cloudily filled the room

So, cloud is a good word choice from a grammatical perspective since it can be used with a variety of ways. But is it a good term to use to describe a product or technology? I’m not so sure. As an exercise, I started writing down words that came to mind when I thought about “cloud”. In no particular order:

Any patterns here? From my read, most of the terms seem to have negative connotations. I get visions of letting a balloon loose into the air and watching it disappear into the clouds. (Bursting bubble anyone?) To take things a bit further:

• Companies have used terms like “vaporware” to describe software or code in advance of its release which then fails to materialize.
• “Pie in the sky” is a phrase used to describe a promise heaven but continuing to suffer on earth.
• To “have your head in the clouds” comes from the Latin proverb “Caput inter nubila condit,” a line from Virgil’s Aneid which, loosely defined, means to have unrealistic, impractical ideas.
• Fragile, weightless, intangible, nebulous, unclear, impossible to measure – all these connote something that is vacuous and non-solid.

So I ask you this, does this make you comfortable putting your mission-critical data or applications within a cloud? Earlier terms like cluster, super, utility and grid computing, in my mind, make much more “tangible” sense. While I’m sure this term is here to stay and there is not much that I can do to change that, I do question the terms legitimacy within technology and the development of solid business practices. Would you rather work in the cloud or work on a server? Even though the term “virtualization” tends to imply something that is not real, it is closer to the ground and significantly more absolute than something “in the clouds.”

Computing in the cloud, or dare I say, on “cloud nine”…I’m just waiting for reality to hit and the rain to begin.

[Cloud images used by permission.]

As I strive to better understand these new emerging technologies such as “cloud computing”, I frequently find myself reading various blog articles, many professing to be the end-all definition related to the topic. It is not very often that I actually come across an article that is informative, understandable and compelling enough to warrant note.

The post by Alex Iskold is a perfect example of one of these excellent articles. An important definition from his post:

The idea behind cloud computing is simple – scale your application by deploying it on a large grid of commodity hardware boxes. Each box has exactly the same system installed and behaves like all other boxes. The load balancer forwards a request to any one box and it is processed in a stateless manner – meaning the request is followed by an immediate response and no state is held by the system. The beauty of the cloud is in its scalability – you scale by simply adding more boxes.

Some may say that this article is a bit “heavy” on Amazon as the “killer service.” But I believe his point is that Amazon has put a lot of weight behind and person-hours into their products and they will be hard to duplicate, at least for players developing “cloud” products. But some of his general comments hold true regardless of the product: “Free from the need to solve the scalability problems, startups are able to focus on the specific problems their product or service is trying to solve.”

I recommend this as a good read on what Cloud Computing is, a la Amazon, and for people really trying to make heads or tails of grid, utility, cloud and distributed computing.

In closing, Alex’s line “…we are witnessing a fundamental shift in our ability to compute and this is just the beginning…” truly sums it up for all players and customers in this market. I echo that whole heartedly.