I spent some time analyzing search trends of different computing keywords to try to put everything in perspective. Google trends is a nice too that gives insight into broad search patterns.

We all know that the term “Cloud Computing” is relatively new to the Technology buzz. But just how new is it? For starters, I ran a quick comparison of “Cloud Computing,” “Grid Computing” and “Utility Computing”.

The term Grid Computing has been around for a while (even before Google Trends tracking shows it). But as you can see from the graphic above, it is trending downwards. Utility Computing has pretty much remained below the radar in comparison. But, the newcomer Cloud Computing, which made its full entrance into this trend analysis around 2007 is rapidly gaining momentum. 2008 seems to be a pivotal time where it surpassed Grid Computing (and continues to grow).

Cloud computing is relatively new as a server hosting term. People are starting to loosely associate it with traditional hosted server solutions. So to put this all in perspective as well as add some other “hot” keywords in to the mix, I trended the following:

• Cloud computing
• Grid computing
• Dedicated server
• Colocation
• Virtualization

The results were quite interesting:

My read on this is as follows:

• Cloud Computing and Virtualization are the next hot hosting platforms. It is important to keep in mind that the term “Virtualization” can apply to many things, not simply hosting, in fact, Virtualization within the hosting environment is comparable to Cloud Computing. Virtualization has existed for some time, but mainly within a host’s computer (e.g., a desktop). But as Parallels, VMWare, Xen and even Microsoft’s Hyper-V gain momentum as virtualized servers within a hosted environment, this term will continue to grow. See the chart below for further details (VMware is the clear leader but Hyper-V is clearly going to gain market-share quickly).
  
• The Dedicated server term is slowly starting to lose ground vs. Virtualization and Cloud Computing, but it is fairly obvious that it is still a term that people know and look for. There are always developers or companies who will ONLY go with a dedicated server for one reason or another. I predict, though, that as they start getting on the virtualization and cloud bandwagons, that this term will continue to erode. Another term “VPS” (Virtual Private Server) is fairly common among hosting solutions but differs from Virtualization in many ways. With a VPS, you share resources with the other clients on a particular server, whereas Virtualized servers (like GoGrid which is built on top of Xen) dedicate RAM and CPU usage to the predefined server instances running on a particular node. To again put it all into perspective, see the chart below. VPS is one of the terms that seems to be remaining steady as a searched term. This is most likely due to the fact that most of the main-stream hosting providers offer VPS hosting as their “bread & butter.”
  

In general, these terms all seem to be converging, which means only one thing, confusion and clutter within the marketplace. With so many options now available, potential server customers are presented with even more choices, and these choices frequently can’t be directly compared. One can look at RAM allocation, Hard Drive sizes and CPU speeds as sort of a rudimentary measure, but that is where the simple comparisons end. Now one is forced to choose between scalability options, server and data persistence, operating system images, peripherals (like firewalling and load-balancing), data storage, clone-ability…the list goes on. Attempts are being made to standardize these comparisons with check-lists, but since the market is so new and mutating with new entrants and updated feature sets, the IT Professional may be challenged when making decisions.

Lastly to put things all in perspective a bit, I ran a couple of other search terms, comparing “Twitter”  against Cloud, Grid and Utility Computing…the results aren’t surprising (the green line is Twitter):

And put the iPhone into the mix and everything drops off the map (note, this graph is just for Cloud, Grid, Twitter and iPhone - iPhone is the green line below):

Also, the Cloud just got another potential injection of PR from Apple as well with their announcement of MobileMe. To take directly from the source:

“MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars on a secure online server — or “cloud” — and pushes them down to your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change on one device, the cloud updates the others.”

Apple has brought a new technology term, the “Cloud”, previously reserved for developers, IT managers and the like to the main-stream public. Watch the cloud continue to grow now almost exponentially, I predict, even down to common-place iconography:

So, how can you “keep your head out of the clouds” with all of this clutter? I can offer the following points to help:

• Look beyond the hardware – it’s becoming virtualized and virtually upgraded constantly; some companies will tout just one piece of the mix, look at Support, the company’s history, their Terms of Service or Service Level Agreements as other non-tangible measures
• Don’t just jump on the bandwagon – a solution for one company or competitor may not be the solution for you; shop carefully
• Get involved with the community – the fact that you are reading this article means that you are doing the right thing in doing your research first. Read blogs and forums as well as attend meetings to talk to end users
• Don’t over-extend your resources – IT budgets are tight so make your decision based on that. Dedicated servers are frequently premium monthly payments; virtualized hosting can even be price by usage
• Follow the K.I.S.S. rule – keep things simple; over-engineered network topologies can actually hurt your presence.

Where does GoGrid come into play? For starters, it offers “control in the cloud” by crystallizing real, on-demand servers into an experience that is simple, scaleable and powerful. If you want to visit Cloud Computing in a way that is both understandable and attainable, look no further than GoGrid.

Yesterday we rolled out a new feature for GoGrid that should make the creation of Servers and Load Balancers even easier and faster. We call it “IP Suggest” and it is extremely easy to use. As you are creating a new Server or Load Balancer and you come to the IP Address field, just start typing in the beginning digits of your IP addresses. The network “widget” shows you a list of all of your Public IP addresses, used or unused.

For the Application/Web/Database servers, only the UNUSED IP addresses are presented within the IP address field.

The Load Balancer acts a bit differently. For the Virtual IP field, only the UNUSED IP addresses are displayed, however on the Real IPs field (these would be the IP addresses of the application/web/database server where you want the Load Balancer to direct traffic), ALL IP addresses are displayed.

Below is a quick Flash video that showcases the feature in action.

Hope you like this enhancement!

As part of our regular updates to GoGrid code and functionality, we have released several new Web/Application and Database Sever Templates to GoGrid. This is part of a two set release with the next round coming tomorrow. (More information on the second set of templates in a subsequent blog post.)

One of the great features of GoGrid is the ability to instantly create new servers based on precompiled and tested templates. Our goal is to provide a significant number of templates to match many different development needs and do so in a timely manner.

Yesterday, we released the following templates:

Web/Application Servers:

• CentOS 4.5 (32-bit) with LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (32-bit) with LAMP stack
• Windows 2003 Server (32-bit) with IIS, ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express

Database Servers:

• CentOS 4.5 (32-bit) with PostgreSQL 8.2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (32-bit) with PostgreSQL 8.2
• Windows 2003 Server (32-bit) with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express

These 6 additional server images now compliment the original list of servers:

Web/Application Servers:

• CentOS 4.4 (32-bit) with Apache 2.2 and PHP 5
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (32-bit) with Apache 2.2 and PHP 5
• Windows 2003 Server (32-bit) with IIS 6.0

Database Servers:

• CentOS 4.4 (32-bit) with MySQL 5.0
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (32-bit) with MySQL 5.0
• Windows 2003 Server (32-bit) with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Workgroup (additional charge of $99.99/month)
• Windows 2003 Server (32-bit) with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard (additional charge of $249.99/month)

With 13 templates and growing, GoGrid is rapidly becoming the de facto source for scalable, on-demand servers. Also, remember that we are the first to bring FREE web-based load balancing into the mix, as well as an allotment of static IPs, free inbound bandwidth and a “utility” type of pricing model (pay as you go). So what are you waiting for? Sign up for GoGrid and get your development or production environment running in minutes.

The Dilbert cartoon continues its virtualization theme and the topic is a new “creative” way to ensure that you don’t have any bugs!

Obviously the GoGrid team doesn’t subscribe to this methodology, only to the cartoon.

From today’s Dilbert cartoon (published on 2/12/08):

Will Dilbert be able to save the day? Our software engineers already have! Obviously, Dilbert hasn’t heard of GoGrid where you can deploy virtualized servers within minutes! I sure hope that Scott Adams builds this theme out. It might prove to be interesting.