Actually, this is an article about Cloud Computing. It seems to me that it has really been around for a fairly long time and like USB, not really a new concept at all.
A small side note, USB-type technology has been around since I was a kid. I remember messing with my buddy's Commodore 64 computer and he had all the cool toys for it: disk drive, printer, modem (even though there was not much to dial into back in good old 1982). I remember all of these things used a common cable, called a DIN (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_connector) which you would plug in a printer, then disk drive, then modem. The OS was smart enough to recognize the fact that they were all there, which I thought was pretty slick. So, what was old is new again.
So, cloud computing. Looking on Wikipedia it gives a long, drawn-out explanation of all of its features, ideas, concepts, and who uses it. Then it finally gives some examples.
The reason I opened up with the ditty about USB vs. DIN is that I think Cloud Computing has been a part of the IT industry since I can remember. The earliest example that I recall is when I started my post-secondary education back in the '80s. I remember my first semester when my chemistry lab professor and my digital electronics lab instructor wanted (no INSISTED!) that we write all of our reports on the DEC VAX and email them to him (What the...what is email? Email? Did he have a stammer?). No, he brought us all into the VAX lab and gave us the overview on how to log in, write things up and send them to him. His excuse was that he didn't like paper and would often travel to the other campus for meetings. That way, he could look at our work from there. Fair enough, I thought. My grade is riding on your tyranny.
Now, this was where I started to wonder. What magic would enable him to get to this? Being the curious kid that I was (and still am) I started to dig. I saw the lab tech running around one Friday afternoon when I was in there finishing an assignment. There was a U2 concert that I had tickets to for the following evening and I wanted to make sure all of my homework was done before I drove to the venue. I stopped him and said, “...hey, busy??” He said “..always, why?” I proceeded to ask him about these terminals and where they all went, where the data was stored, how it was read, etc. He took me into a locked room and there was this big box with the word 'digital' on the side of it and a bunch a wires hanging off, going into the floor. He showed me the door where the hard drive was (a whopping 20 MB I think it was) and it was as big as a Shop-Vac and made this 'mmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmMMMMmmmm' noise. Then he showed me the really cool thing. Two things actually: a MUX or multiplexer, which was a prehistoric version of an Ethernet hub and a gateway which had more wires that disappeared into a phone-like-jack-thingy on the wall. This, he explained, was the connection, over a fancy phone line owned by the college, which allowed this computer to 'talk' to the other computers at the other campuses. He told me that it used a thing called 'clustering'. This way, you could log into the computer from almost anywhere.
Years later, after I had left the Navy, I was wanting to jump into technology with both feet. I went back to school and I discovered a service called 'CompuServe'. With CompuServe, you could talk to people around the corner, across the Province and around the planet! This was my first real-world exposure to Cloud Computing. The school I was attending had a CompuServe account, so fortunately, I didn't have to pay for it. It was expensive since they had the Bill Gates idea of charging you for the time you spend 'online' – by the minute. Notice that they are buried within the Ted Turner Empire of AOL now? I think people keep their accounts more for nostalgic reasons.
CompuServe used DEC PDP-11 computers, connected together with a thing called an X.25 gateway. Buried behind all of this was VAXCluster – this is what allowed you to 'login' from anywhere that you could 'dial-in'. So, you were logging into a network, not a computer. Cloud Computing – all of your applications 'lived' there too. This was similar to today's SaaS model.
As time went on and I grew up (grew up! ha!) I managed to secure jobs (temp work) with various levels of the Canadian Federal and Ontario Provincial Governments. These technologies used by the governments were far too expensive for the average computer shop and most private companies. Back in those days, most folks had Novell NetWare and WordPerfect 5.x. Governments, however, having the Taxpayer's Wallet at their disposal, were a different story.
Enter the Governments. They were already utilizing Cloud Computing and SaaS, although primitive by today's standards. At least two or three major Federal Government agencies I did work for used a networking software called Banyan VINES or (Virtual Integrated NEtwork Service). This used a technology called StreetTalk – which meant when you logged into the computer, you actually connected to the network. All of the 'services' were floating in a virtual world around your network. So, I was in Ottawa, ON and I could send a message to someone in Halifax, NS. I could even print a document on their printer from my workstation halfway across the country. Now, another example of Cloud Computing (simpler than this) was a technology called X.400. At the time, the Federal Government and Bell Telecommunications Group were the only ones that 'owned' these networks. I am sure it was not a simple flat rate of $9.95/month. This way, we could actually send email to people OUTSIDE the Government! I won't get into the nomenclature of X.400 addresses as it is outside the scope of this document and I hated having to type those out. We could actually send email to 'real' email addresses such as folks on CompuServe and at colleges/universities around the world. The X.400 was a simple version of a Cloud Computing concept, not a service or storage, but a very primitive concept. The service 'lived' somewhere else, but you used it 'here'.
Then came my exposure to the new version of Novell NetWare 4.x. It utilized a thing called NDS (NetWare Directory Service). Like VINES, you logged into a 'network' and then had access to a bunch of servers and the applications that lived on them. This way, you could print to any printer (that you had permissions for), run WordPerfect, run CorelDRAW, or copy a file from your local computer to a mapped network drive. Cloud Computing. Software As A Service.
Warp ahead to the year 2000. When Windows 2000 Server was released, it contained something called ADS or Active Directory Service. This allowed you, once again, to run Software as a service. I remember looking over the shoulder of our network administrator and watching him add things to the ADS container (looked quite a bit like StreetTalk or Novell NDS). I don't know if this is a security hole, but I could run the ADS browser from my desktop and see everyone's computer. It had their employee ID as the computer name and most folks had their 'Documents' directory wide open – I could easily see their documents and their MS Outlook *.pst file. I later found out this was a function of both ADS and the user's workstation.
Hop into the TARDIS and now we are in the year 2009. I would say the most common (and popular use) of Cloud Computing is Google Docs. This way, have a web browser, will travel. I can put a document out there and I can let anyone else with a web browser see it, edit it, critique it and even download it in almost any word processing format that they choose. The only thing that bugs me about it is the bad press that Google has seen in the last while about 'willingly giving people's information' to law enforcement around the planet. Is it true? I don't know, but you put a document out on the Internet someplace on someone's server and you do not know where it is or who really has access to it. Since we are also concerned with security, this could be another discussion for security in Cloud Computing.
