The Dangers of cloud computing

In a follow-up article to What is PAAS, Chris Keane highlights the dangers of vendor lock-in and how Open PAAS can help mitigate these issues. This is especially relevant after reading about Coghead being acquired by SAP. This is not just an issue for businesses – users of any web service risk downtimes as well as the company discontinuing service.

The advantage of going with big players (Amazon, Google, Salesforce) is that the chance of them going-under is very unlikely. Does this mean we will see mergers of smaller PAAS providers? Only time will tell.

McKinsey has recently made their paper ‘Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing’ available that highlights cloud computing being more expensive than in-house infrastructure. This has led to many follow-up articles.

Cloud Computing is a fasinating environment and it really levels the playing field for developer-shops of any size. As a sole developer, I can create an application using Salesforce, Amazon Web Services or any other PAAS provider and make this available to the whole world. As the application becomes more popular, scalability requirements can be increased seamlessly at the provider level.

However the hype that Cloud computing is generating sets the environment up for unrealistic expectations. Articles like the McKinsey report and judicial research by companies can mitigate this.

What is PAAS – Article by CEO of Wavemaker

Christopher Keene (CEO of WaveMaker) has a very succinct article on what PAAS (Platform as a service) actual is with several solutions.
I have worked with Salesforce and am currently reviewing Wavemaker and Google Apps. All have pros and cons but the important thing is the power that these platforms give the individual developer or small startup company.

Now without having to worry about hardware and infrastructure, you can concentrate on the business solution. You can let the PAAS provider worry about scalability.

Of course the whole ‘cloud computing’ is becoming the latest tech buzzword – but hey, it keeps this path interesting.

Stay tuned for more developments….

Cloud Computing – interesting links and articles

Here are some links and articles that focus on cloud computing -

A to Z of Cloud computing – an article highlighting issues and topics in cloud computing by contributors of Sys-Con’s Cloud Computing e-zine.

Cloud Computing – The ultimate recession technology – an great article by Benjimin Tomkins highlighting how the current economic conditions are making it a perfect time for companies to start considering Cloud computing platforms.

Pinpointing Products in the hype cycle – an interesting article on how Clod Computing, Mashups and SOA relate to the Gartner Hype Cycle.

TrustSaas – web service that allows one to monitor and be alerted of downtime in web services.

10 common mistakes architects make – highlights mistakes that can be made when planning Force.com applications.

Top programming languages – a popular website that lists programming languages in order of their usage and popularity.

Cloud Clout – Computing in the cloud

I have decided since it is a new year with lots of potential to refocus what this blog is about.

Welcome then to Cloud Clout – Computing in the cloud.

The aim will be to focus on news, links and articles that can dispell the hype and confusion around the latest buzzword to hit the computing field.

Although there is a lot of hype surrounding Cloud Computing, it is an important direction due to the global recession that is causing IT departments to rethink how they develop, deploy and support applications. It also levels the playing field for development shops – you now can be a sole developer and create and deploy an application to the world without having to worry about infrastructure costs.

Consumer applications are also making their way onto the web and some of these will also be highlighted.

Visual Map of Cloud Computing

Peter Laird at Laird OnDemand has an excellent article where he explains the different markets in cloud computing as well as mapping how they all are related.
Visit it here.
Some interesting environments that highlight what an interesting time it is to be a developer…

Oracle Cloud Computing

In what is definitely a move that further signifies the increasing significance of cloud computing and SAAS (software as a service), Oracle announced at Oracle Open World that their database product would allow backup to Amazon’s S3 storage service.

Read more about it onOracle’s Technet Cloud Computing Center

Whether this takes off for large enterprises remains to be seen but it is definitely worth looking into for small to medium sized businesses. Now data storage and maintenance does not have to be onsite, nor does the business have to incur the expense of hardware, support and staff.

Welcome to Web3.0 – what it all means

TechCrunchIT has a great interview with Marc Benioff – CEO of Salesforce – Welcome to Web 3.0: Now Your Other Computer is a Data Center.

With Google AppEngine, Amazon Web Services, Salesforce and others enabling infrastructure as a service, the barriers to setting up your business on the web are now dependent on the business idea and application. No need to worry about server installation, scalability issues or authentication since these are now handled by the services.

What follows is a breakdown of the various acronyms and links to other articles.