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Revision as of 22:17, 9 July 2009

The World Economic Forum started a research project at Davos 2009 concerning cloud computing, which they broadly define to include all kinds of remote services, from Software as a Service to virtual machines.

Andy Oram was asked to provide some ideas on the implications of cloud computing for business as well as its future operating environment. This wiki is a discussion forum where anyone with relevant and valid ideas can suggest points for his reply.

Benefits and drawbacks for potential clients

• Total reliance on a cloud service (virtual machine services or SaaS)

• • May be valuable for start-ups and skunkworks

• • For larger organizations, useful for some well-defined functions, particularly non-critical ones. (But note that many companies use services for customer relations management and for paying employees, which could be considered critical functions.)

• • Requires a thorough understanding of the cloud service's operations, the risks involved, and management techniques to handle the service and its risks.

• • SaaS allows vendor to change or remove features capriciously, and clients cannot choose to keep old version by rejecting the upgrade

• Use of cloud to supplement in-house operations

• • May be useful for:

• • • Handling peaks and spikes

• • • Planning growth that will eventually be moved in-house

• • Requires skills in both domains (in-house and cloud) as well as strategies for migrating and replicating between them.

Benefits and drawbacks of offering software as a service or using a development environment

• Benefits are extremely compelling

• • Project start-up can be faster and cheaper

• • Potential clients can use software simply by visiting a web page--no need to download anything, unless a plugin is desired

• • Updates are immediate and do not require client action

• • Testing can be simplified by simply cloning an instance of the software environment

• Many free software developers already use a service such as SourceForge or Launchpad to develop and distribute software.

• Drawbacks

• • Main drawback, especially when using cloud service at a relatively high level (development environment or SaaS instead of virtual machines) is delivery through a web browser instead of running with native code

• • • Performance impacts (diminishing as technology improves)

• • • Lack of access to features of the operating system

• • • Restrictions on user interface (diminishing as technology improves)

• • Other drawbacks are the same as for other organizations

• • • Administration may be more difficult, at least at current stages of the field's development

• • • Costs of using a virtual service may be higher than stand-alone servers for large projects

• • • Development tailored to a particular development environment such as Google AppServer or Windows Azure may limit portability

Access

• The requirement that clients have network access makes cloud services inaccessible or difficult for:

• • People without Internet access (much of the developing world)

• • People with very slow Internet access (many areas in both the developing and developed world)

• • People without continuous Internet access (dial-up, also still common in both the developing and developed world)

• On the other hand, services that are parsimonious in the use of bandwidth and client-side compute power can (through mobile devices) extend new services to previously cut-off populations.

Resilience

• What degree of geographic distribution offers sufficient safety for:

• • Individuals or small companies

• • Major corporations and organizations with reliability requirements

• • Defense and other sensitive government functions

• Benefits of automatically distributing files, perhaps among multiple vendors (example; Cleversafe)

• Potential targets for attack in war or by terror

• Should there be resilience standards?

• Related to #Portability

Portability

• Related to #Resilience and #Software freedom

• Importance: Backups are recommended for persistent data to another system or service outside of the cloud.

• Feasibility: All APIs can be emulated, so in theory organizations can use the same scripts and procedures to replicate operations in multiple services

• Trends: There are calls for "open cloud computing," referring to standards that would facilitate portability.

• • Standards could lead to automatic, instant migration between cloud vendors.

• • As with all standardization, it's hard to:

• • • Get vendors to cooperate on advances that would reduce client lock-in

• • • Slow down innovation in an emerging technology enough to produce a standard

Environmental implications

• Energy trade-offs between concentrated megaservers and smaller systems distributed around the world.

• Impacts on localities where huge server farms are built.

Software freedom

• Related to #Portability

• Cloud eviscerates software freedom:

• • New software and patches can be built on free software while still being hidden behind the cloud (except free software under the rarely used Affero GPL).

• • (Mostly in regard to Saas) Even releasing the source code would have little to no effect, because the real lock-in for cloud services is its role as central repository: storing the data and (for sites with community aspects) providing connections among different visitors.

• Solutions:

• • Open formats so clients can extract data and reuse it elsewhere

• • Cost and time to develop new software has decreased so much that SaaS features are no longer such a big selling point (see article, Free software meets corporate needs, including Software as a Service

• • As alternative to centralized services, promote radically distributed systems

• • • Individuals maintain control of their own data and data processing and peer with others to share data and processing.

• • • Requires heightened identity and validation technologies (see articles From P2P to Web Services: Addressing and Coordination and From P2P to Web Services: Trust

Government use

• Use of popular cloud services (such as Google Docs)

• • Benefits

• • • Familiar to staff and public alike, and therefore easy to promote use

• • • Quick and cheap to set up

• • • Allows integration of government message and discussion with other popular forums

• • Drawbacks

• • • Often have policies that run counter to government needs:

• • • • Services may access visitor data in ways that treat privacy cavalierly.

• • • • Services may force visitors to take on liability requirements that governments cannot do.

• • • Lack the reliability, and sometimes the security, that the public has a right to expect of government services.

• • • May not have features governments need.

• Should governments collaborate on producing public-domain or open-source social networks and cloud services tailored to their needs?