First, here’s my own take on cloud computing in the future. I can see that within a very few years (maybe now for some of us), many of us will not know (or care to know) where our data reside. Instead, we’ll be using our home computers as netbooks, connecting to our databases, friend-networks, profiles and documents, and we really won’t care where the data live. Today we see this happening with the rise of Google Docs (documents), gmail (Yahoo and Hotmail too, of course for years), and I see more and more people content to “just Google” to find answers to questions and no longer needing to have all of the books sitting on bookshelves at home.

For years I have been replacing my worn-out old computers with new and more powerful computers, making a 2x to 5x improvement in speed each time^[1]. However, I’m increasingly putting my documents online (Google docs), and my email is being retained on servers for online use. My most powerful computer is the iMac in my music/video studio, which is not my primary workstation (I can keep it cranking for hours converting video from one format to another). My primary is a laptop system. And at times I’m going out to meetings with just my iPhone and no computer at all – because the iPhone has enough connectivity and power to do what I need. I know I’m not unique, and in fact as a power user I may be carrying far more compute power with me than 90% of the populace, who have moved into the cloud even faster than I have.^[2]

Why does JD bring identity into the equation? Well, if my data is no longer physically on my computer, then what’s left to me is identity. And in a sense identity has also become disconnected from my physical computer(s) and consequently harder for me to locate. And identity is rapidly becoming portable, though many companies would prefer that it not be.

Some ideas from JD’s report:

“The Internet and a host of new communications technologies have transformed the concept of identity and redefined our relationships…” “Growing numbers of digital natives now define themselves by their Web presence as well as their real-world presence.” “…mass markets give way to millions of niche markets and … culture changes from one in which companies push products to passive consumers into … empowered users pull down products and services that meet their needs…” “It appears that the full cloud, in its startling richness, remains at least a decade away,” “The public may not be familiar with the term, but many are already doing cloud computing. We have been using Web applications for years without any concern about where the applications actually run.” “The cloud has become our entertainment network: we are spending hundreds of millions of hours on sites like YouTube, Hulu and Flickr.” “The term cloud computing, which came into wide use in tech circles only in early 2007, does have a specific, technical meaning. It refers to a collection of resources—applications, platforms, raw computing power and storage, and managed services (like antivirus detection)—delivered over the Internet.” “While Amazon’s utility computing solution chiefly targets small businesses and consumers, companies such as Salesforce.com and Netsuite are targeting businesses of all sizes with both virtual hosting and software suites to run their data.” “More than a decade ago Oracle CEO Larry Ellison declared that the network would become the computer, …”

Some final thoughts from me:

I am concerned about the fragility of the network. When our data live in the cloud and networks fail, we lose access to our data. This happens to me more often than I’d like – probably a couple of times a month in my home office! What will happen in an age of netbook^[2] computers? I think that ultimately the cloud is going to be partially collocated in your home or office, as well as off in some big server farm in Oregon (or pick any other state, you’re probably right). I think this will be solved by a combination of local storage (Network Attached Storage [NAS] perhaps, which is what I use right now), local processing power (I have a big computer in the studio and my laptop computer can be used to control it), and remote processing and delivery of certain services that really belong out in the cloud closer to the customer.

The full cloud … a decade away? I doubt it. We’re all using aspects of the cloud every day. It will progress rapidly. However, I do think that full acceptance of cloud computing is going to require a generational shift — in other words, today’s digerati over the age of say 40 may not be able to shift to cloud computing at all. Those in their 50s and 60s are still sending documents around via email rather than collaborating online.

Cheap computing and cheap communication? Well, I don’t find communication cheap right now. My phone bill used to be $25 a month. Now it’s $100 for a landline and close to that for a mobile plan with adequate data capabilities. I buy cloud computing and they nickel and dime me to death…the starting price has gotten better (around $25), but as I use more bandwidth and CPU power, it becomes more expensive than owning my own servers. Someone has to make a profit somewhere, and the guys operating the cloud are first in line, which is OK by me, but I don’t want anyone to think I’m promoting services that are by their nature the cheapest solution to all problems.

Abstracted and scalable are the two adjectives I like to use the most when comparing cloud computing to other computing. And those are the characteristics I most like about cloud computing.

Yeah, it is where we’re going. Without question. Most certainly. And we’re going to get there soon.

[2] One of the odd forces pushing people toward cloud email, in my opinion, is the unreliability of their home computers. Get a virus and your email might be destroyed. Hard drive breaks down and your email is gone forever. Upgrade to a new computer and start all over again? Nah. It’s far easier if your email is at gmail because when you get a new computer your mail is still in exactly the state it was before you switched. And when you get off the plane in New Delhi, your mail is still available to you at the hotel (or Internet café) even if your laptop computer is back in San Francisco.

[3] Bonus: A recent Infoworld article on netbooks.

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What will happen in an age of netbook computers? When the computing power and the data live off in the cloud somewhere, and my little computer is used primarily to connect, and not to process?

Well, I think that ultimately the cloud is going to be partially collocated in your home or office, as well as off in some big server farm in Oregon (or pick any other state – you’re probably right). I think this will be solved by a combination of local storage (Network Attached Storage [NAS] perhaps, which is what I use right now), local processing power (I have a big computer in the studio and my portable computer can be used to control it), and remote processing and delivery of certain services that really belong out in the cloud closer to the customer.

Oh, and maybe I’d better look at the fine print in my Comcast contract – I am purchasing a “home” Internet service, and of course I am doing business-related tasks here every day. They probably don’t deliver the same kind of reliability to homes as they deliver to businesses. But I’m not the only one doing this, and if you combine the current rage for netbook computers and the current state of affairs in connectivity, it leaves us pretty vulnerable to outages.

Some netbook references:

• Netbook on Wikipedia (this is not the best or most complete article it could be, but it’s a start)
• Larry Ellison’s ideas about the network computer
• The ASUS eee PC (I saw three teens opening the box and oogling a new one outside Best Buy yesterday on a warm afternoon – they couldn’t wait to get it going) – look at their web site – this machine is clearly for (young) teens – these kids in the ads must have an average age of 14
• The OLPC laptop, which in many ways, but not all, is a netbook
• Is the iPod Touch a baby netbook waiting to grow up?
• Dick Tracy wrist-radio (is it a cellphone? is it a netbook? aw shucks, is it anything at all?)

This whole article is a precursor to a longer article about cloud computing’s role in our future, and inspired by a series of reports by JD Lasica.

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I’ve mentioned before that I’m bringing up web sites on Slicehost. It’s a cloud computing environment and that means I don’t know and don’t care exactly what or where the server is, and I only buy as much as I need.

It’s an interesting experience because in the rest of my life I’m constantly expanding my (personal) computers by adding storage and processor power so they can run faster and faster, but in the case of cloud computing, instead, I’m scaling down the pieces of software so they can run more efficiently in a small “computer” instead.I was wondering a few days ago why one of my slices was running so “hot” – it was using up all of its memory and it was swapping to disk like crazy. I thought that Apache (web server) and MySQL (database) would be smart enough to make good use of whatever memory was available, whether it be large or small.

So in the interest of geekiness I took a look at what I could do to save the situation.

Turns out that my reducing the number of processes that Apache is allowed to run, and my using an example configuration file that MySQL provides for small installations, I was able to tune my slice so that it hardly ever swaps (which reduces disk utilization to minimum) and just barely fills up the available RAM in the virtual computer.

Here are the references that were most useful to me in this process. It probably took me 30 minutes to get it all tuned up. And wow it runs great now!

• Lowering Apache memory usage (just read the Apache part, not the MySQL part)
• Finding and using the my-small.cfg MySQL configuration file (this is specifically designed for Slicehost, which I use)

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Cloud Computing– it’s a relatively new term for a relatively old concept. For at least six months now I’ve been thinking about two inevitabilities: 1) that my servers will fail some day soon; and 2) that I may have to rapidly scale (up) some customer’s site because it will suddenly have traffic needs well beyond the capacity of my servers.

The answer is pretty obvious to me – I’ll soon be eliminating my own serves in favor of purchasing computing power in whatever quantities I need at the time. Scalable on demand. From one of the cloud service providers that are coming online now.

Buying cloud computing essentially means buying computing power without knowing or caring exactly where it is physically located or what type of equipment it’s on. Someone else buys the servers, puts them in racks, powers them, cools them, and connects them to the Internet. And they stand there ready to go into service whenever they’re needed.

I looked at Amazon EC2 first, because it’s been getting a lot of publicity. Amazon has built server farms that could scale up and down rapidly, and has been supporting its own services on those computers, for years. It’s was logical that they’d be in a position to sell “time” on servers to anyone who wants it…as long as they had the spare capacity. But Amazon charges $0.10 per hour for a basic “server” instance, which means $2.40 a day or over $72 a month for even one server. That’s pretty close to what I was paying Verio for a virtual private server in the late 1990s, and it’s probably 50% of what it costs me to have my own server with several times the capacity.

Then I ran across a company called Slicehost – recently acquired by Rackspace. These guys offer raw server instances (virtual private servers) starting at $20 a month. These $20 “slices” are small, but they get the job done and they’re ideal for hosting web sites that are simple, have low traffic requirements, and yet might have to be scaled up at a future date. To scale, you access the Slicehost online control panel, and within minutes you can have a much larger slice of a server – still “private” – with literally the click of a button.

Oh, and the “private” is important. My clients need pretty tight security, and running a web site on a virtual private server means they don’t have to worry about some other user of the same server having a weak password and getting hacked, consequently opening up a window to my client also getting hacked. With a virtual private server, there’s only one user, and you’re responsible for your own problems.

So the site you’re looking at right now is on Slicehost. On their smallest and cheapest offering. And yet handling the traffic pretty well. And on top of that, I have several sites all on the same slice. This isn’t for the faint of heart – I had a Ubuntu 8.04 server instance installed and from there I installed all of the services I needed, but this really requires some middling sysadmin expertise. (Takes me under an hour to provision one slice and bring up a WordPress instance. Then about 30 minutes for additional WordPress instances or web sites.)

This is the future and it’s slick.

Oh, by the way, the new look of the web site is not related to the switch to Slicehost. I just got tired of the old look, and loved this new theme, and switched over during the migration to Slicehost.

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