Amazon EC2

"Amazon EC2’s simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. " by Amazon EC2.

I just see the introduction about Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Amazon EC2.

It is a web service that provides a running environment and compute capacity in the cloud, which means in their server.

Their website also provides a detailed information about Amazon EC2. You can see the Amazon EC2 Functionality, Service Highlights, Instance Types...etc on this website.

The Fight for the Future of Cloud Computing

Google Versus Microsoft: The Fight for the Future of Cloud Computing
Reference: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/Google-Versus-Microsoft-The-Fight-for-the-Future-of-Cloud-Computing/

This article is talking about the world's largest IT companies - Google and MS already prepare for the fight of cloud computing. Every large IT company wants to develop infrastructure of cloud computing so that they can play an important role in the future.

This article mentions that Google has been developed most of their applications on the web. The most famous one would be "Google App Engine," it provides a platform so that people can build web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications. People also can share and discuss their application there and test others applications. This platform not only uses the concept of SaaS but also the web 2.0.

Finally, it discusses about which company will win the fight. And it says, "Google and Microsoft might wind up splitting this new space between them with each playing to their strengths. At the same time, a third company might hold the key toward developing the cloud. "

I agree with this point of view, these two companies have their own strengths, for example, Microsoft has the largest OS market (so that MS can combine their IE with these new features); on the other hand, Google has the largest search engine market. It might be a big war and the winner might surprise everyone (a smaller company wins)?! Who knows?!

Eric's day of cloud computing

Will cloud computing dominate the future of the software market?

Eric is the program manager of a small IT company. He begins his workday as usual.

9:00	Eric opens his computer at his office. After the linux Ubuntu is started, he opens the Firefox 3 and logins into the company email system and calendar system to check if there is anything to do.	The company does not maintain its own email/calendar/document system, the email, calendar and document services has been put inside into the Google cloud-Google will offer the enterprise services over the internet.
9:05	Eric checks the online calendar of the meeting room in the browser and sees that the meeting room at the second floor is available from 9:30 to 11:30.	Since the online calendar is in the cloud, everybody in the company could share the calendar.
9:08	Eric schedules the meeting room and meanwhile he also sends all his teammate an invitation in the email to attend the meeting.	Since the online calendar and email system are both in the cloud, the calendar system could trigger an event to send an email to the receiver within the cloud.
9:15	Eric checks the online calendar event status, and he sees 6 of the 10 invited person say that they would attend the meeting.	Since the online calendar and email system are both in the cloud, the calendar system could update the status of the user in the cloud.
9:30	Eric opens the online presentation slides in the Google docs under this own account. For the teammates that are travelling in another office site, they could share the presentation over Google doc. And attend the meeting over the video conference system.	Google docs could store the word, excel and presentation files in the cloud. People could share those data if they are in the same domain. Video conference system could move the meeting inside the cloud. Through the cloud, they people could collaborate even if they are in the different ends of the cloud.
9:35	Eric and the teammates begin to discuss how to design a CRM system for the FooStorage.Inc.	*FooStorage.Inc is an emerging online store in CA. It is going to open some new warehouses in NY because its customers in the east coast begin to complain about the speed of shipping. However, the company does not want to put too much money on maintaining those servers and software system. It wants to set up an efficient and less expensive CRM system to share/manage the inventory within its growing distributed warehouses.
11:30	Eric and its teammate reached a solution. 1. Buy the data storage from a reliable third-party data storage provider. Let this provider manage the data. 2. Buy the CRM components from Salesforce.com and compose the CRM system. 3. Compose the CRM system, and run the system in Salesforce AppExchange Engine. 4. Monitor and measure the system using the Salesforce CRM monitoring and measurement components.	Data could be in the cloud, and the management of the data could be outsourced to a reliable third-party. Service could be in the cloud, CRM components are services. These services could be rated by provider, quality assurances. Workflow could be in the cloud. The workflow composed by the CRM components is running inside the cloud. The engine to run the workflow should be rated. The whole CRM system could be in the cloud- and we call this SAAS. Testing and measurement of the software could be in the cloud. These data are generated and could be shared over the different roles in distributed sites.
3:00	Eric begins to review his teammate in the online employee evaluation system.	Review system is in the cloud. The review results are shared by all the mangers in the company according to their roles.

Is cloud computing a trap?

There is an article (Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman) talking about cloud computing, it points out that cloud computing will definitely lost people's privacy while people using these applications.

Now, the web applications are more and more popular, people exchange information, check email, communicate with their friends/family, and even though get entertainment on Internet. However, people lose their privacy incidentally when they doing these activities.

In my opinion, the problem may become more serious which also indicates by the last paragraph of this article. The main companies host these web services are reliable(?), for example, Google, MS, IBM...etc. However, if you use a proprietary program or unknown people's web services, you are under the dangers of losing privacy. Can regular people/users distinguish trustful server? Personal security may become a important issue in cloud computing.

Emerging of the cloud computing in big companies

It looks like that all the big companies are trying to push as many applications into the cloud as they can. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM andSalesforce.com are offering their users with their cloud computing architecture.

Amazon offered the Simple Storage Service, which give the user unlimited and inexpensive online storage at the rate of $0.15 per gigabyte per month.

Microsoft offered the Windows Live SkyDrive, now still in beta stage, with a one-gigabyte free storage limit.

Salesforce.com offered its cloud computing infrastructure to other companies through its AppExchange. According to Phil Wainewright’s article: How is AppExchange really doing? The AppExchange breaks the link to Salesforce.com's core CRM application, making it possible for the first time to sign up as a customer for AppExchange applications without the extra cost of licensing the CRM component. The AppExchange applications pay the same $50 fee whether you run one or ten applications; or $100 if you want to run any number from eleven upwards.

IBM is also going to offer its cooperative users with its Blue cloud since late 2007. Blue Cloud, built on IBM’s expertise in leading massive-scale computing initiatives, will be based on open standards and open source software supported by IBM software, systems technology and services.

Besides the official service like Google Calendar, Picasa, YouTube, Gmail and Google Doc, Google recently offered the Google App engine . Google App engine could enable the user to build web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications. In other word, Google is trying to offer the user other than the official Google services, but also want to enable the user services dip inside the Google cloud.