Comments on: the cloud’s best-kept secret

By: friarminor

friarminor — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:15:13 +0000

Just a hunch with open standards… It’s not going to be a reality until quite a number of cloud competitor emerges.
Much as we’d like open source to stand out from the get go, i don’t see it happening unless there’s one big dragon to slay. Eventually there will be but just not before a real cloud innovation war begins among player.
Best.
alain
http://www.mor.ph

By: Pete Steege

Pete Steege — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:20:44 +0000

The Multi-Trillion Dollar Company is inevitable. Just look at the trends in company size over history.

By: Jen McCabe Gorman

Jen McCabe Gorman — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:46:22 +0000

The Cloud’s already here, or rather, the cloud bank is gathering, and we’re all participating on multiple storm fronts that will collide a la Kevin Kelly’s the one machine.
The Cloud concept is fascinating for computational biologists/sociobiologists/evolutionary biologists as well — or it should be.
Let’s look at progressive evolutionary stages of ‘machines’ or things that replicate:
1. CHON (early C, H, Oxygen, Ni molecule chains that led to formation of eukaryotes and prokaryotes).
2. RNA (if you subscribe to the RNA World theory) — with bacteria as allies/enemies and viruses/pathogens as competitors/enemies — so they build…us. Soft spacesuits for RNA. But they program, in essence, us to learn — DNA is the code. We do. We’re the next evolutionary stage, but not the epoch, the pinnacle of life on the planet.
3. Really trixsy part comes about when we program our own replacements to learn, develop semi-sentient decision-making abilities…to adapt. To process external environmental inputs and make decisions based on a hierarchy of preprogrammed ‘needs,’ at which point some level of subjective choice enters into the race for individual survival. Sound familiar to anyone in computing? It should. So computers are the next stage. And the cloud is the primordial ooze we’re creating that will enable them to measure, process, analyze, and engage in decision-making for self replication. When we have computational programs and apps ‘spontaneously’ developing solutions we’ll really be in trouble. Maybe it’s already happening, who knows.
Sounds like sci-fi right?
Sure does, and so what if it is? The Clouds building and our ‘seeding’ of the cloud with increasing bits of information and data (and the ability for programs and apps to monitor our responses and adjust interfaces accordingly without directives straight from programmers)is a lot like sci-fi.
I’m not capable of conveying these sorts of theories in an eloquent and hyper-convincing manner, as I’m at best a ‘hobby’ scientist. But it sure makes for a good mindstorm.
And even if this whole postulation is completely off base (a distinct and highly likely possibility) — it makes for some interesting cocktail hour tweets, no?

By: Harry Lewis

Harry Lewis — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:24:40 +0000

Looks like the link to the BW piece didn't come through, here it is: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2008/tc2008083_703047.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_technology

By: Harry Lewis

Harry Lewis — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:56:23 +0000

One thing that could put the brakes on cloud formation is that, whatever privacy promises clients may get, they are out of the loop if the data are subpoenaed. It's the cloud's lawyers, not yours, who decide whether to resist a court ordered disclosure of "your" data. For all the safety and comfort the cloud provides of reliable, brand-name data storage, the legal problem of the changed meaning of "ownership" seems insurmountable. And the cloud service provider doesn't even have to tell you that it has turned over your records in response to a warrant. We have some more thoughts in Business Week today, but for some reason the editor snipped that crucial one out.

By: Stephen Edgar

Stephen Edgar — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:18:20 +0000

Dell Tries to Trademark ‘Cloud Computing`

By: james governor

james governor — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:12:24 +0000

i would say clearly hugh is talking about trending toward one, a la the current search market, rather than saying there will just be one company offering anything related to cloud services. being a little bit– you know, whatchamacalit– rhetorical.
JP basically articulates my views perfectly.
I have only been in the business 13 years, but my first job was tracking the “dead” IBM mainframe business, which was being “killed” by “open” Unix platforms. Open is awesome, but its not a binary state. In IT the Great Packagers win by understanding open standards are there to be managed and playing The Great Game accordingly.
“Who can get my family onto the network, without needing my little brother to set the darned thing up…” — these days that’s your winner.
In the enteprise: its been companies like Oracle (SQL), Cisco (TCP-IP routing), Microsoft (desktop OS, desktop applications), Dell (the PC, PC servers), BEA+IBM(J2EE), IBM (mainframe), Sun (Unix), Google (link economies) etc.

By: Dennis Howlett

Dennis Howlett — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:44:51 +0000

@High — Power Laws and all that, yep I get that and also that computing history only gets slightly re-written each time BUT — Google is only dominant in consumer search, barely a player in enterpr4ise search (and I WILL defend that one vigorously having seen them tossed out in several projects etc).
The ‘cloud’ thing is SO huge that it’s inconceivable to see a single player. It would make whomever larger than all oil companies put together and then some.
Plus — the broad opportunity hits so many different ‘pieces’ of the enterprise that I can’t see any single player realistically having the computing power to make it their own turf.
BUT — I am prepared top be persuaded. In maybe 5–10 years’ time.

By: steve clayton

steve clayton — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:05:38 +0000

in related news, GigaOm asks "It's 2018: Who Owns the Cloud?" http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2008/tc2008081_152574.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech

By: alan p

alan p — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:04:21 +0000

I agree with your sentimemts, in fact i wrore similar on my own blog after mulling this all over for a conference 2 weeks ago (saw an article on Clouds on Techmeme today which provided the spur to write up that event).
Not sure that JP is right though, I think this game will be a network law game — OS will just be a tool used.
My post here fwiw:
http://broadstuff.com/archives/1121-Clouding-over-the-issues..html

By: Alan Buxton

Alan Buxton — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:45:09 +0000

Enjoyed the Clay Shirky article, thanks.
Got to the end of the discussion on the inevitability of inequality (fine, I can appreciate that). But then was interested to see that Technorati were trying a way of addressing this inevitable inequality via “interesting newcomers”. Guess what — the link is dead (and googles, or cuils, for “technorati interesting newcomers” are equally unpromising).
I suppose this proves a point — any attempt to identify “interesting newcomers” would itself sooner or later suffer from the same power law inequalities that Clay Shirky’s article describes.
Regarding blogs it’s back to Google Reader recommendations to help me find interesting new blogs worth reading, so not the end of the world.
But it does point to the power of the power law, and the difficulty with which you can challenge it — even with open source. Don’t you think?

By: JP

JP — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:39:58 +0000

The funny wars begin. Dell files a patent on "cloud computing". See below: http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77139082

By: steve clayton

steve clayton — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:35:16 +0000

Great post Hugh — you’re brought some of my favourite commentators out with this one.…though I still prefer the cloud card you drew that is now my business card
http://blogs.msdn.com/stevecla01/archive/2007/11/05/my-new-gig.aspx
I agree with Dennis and Tim — there is room and likely to be more than one player and whilst I take your point that the same is true for search they’re different businesses.
The success of Microsoft and Google over the years required relatively small capital investment as initially it was just sofwtare. 1’s and 0’s don’t cost a great deal compared to building a utility of the scale we’re talking of here — to provide a utility cloud that could be used by anyone and everyone. That will require big up front capital investments that I think only a few have the desire and ability to make. Ironically, they’ll probably be software companies and probably not too far from home
You’re right though, there is a very big game going on and I suspect a trend line of articles published on “cloud computing” will show a huge increase over the last 6 months. identifying the winners is going to require a loooooong time yet.

By: schuyler

schuyler — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:16:38 +0000

this whole conversation strikes me as awfully pretentious.…

By: DunCAN

DunCAN — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 01:38:47 +0000

All good — love the image.. it makes an awesome desktop image, thanks
D