What Consumer Cloud? Oh, You Mean The Internet…
I just read an interesting post by Craig over at Cloud Security about Second Life avatars that can jump from one “grid” to another, and then watched Michael Thumann’s discussion on hacking the SL software and platform (which to me is somewhat different that using the built-in tools to escape the bounds of confined grids, but I’m willing to be wrong on that). Now I know virtually nothing about the architecture in Second Life, and I’d like to keep it that way. I have something in my core that fundamentally disagrees with Second Life so I stay away. However, voyeuristically it is interesting to read about people who don’t agree with my opinions and do play around with SL. Everyone has a hobby.
One of the interesting items from Craig’s post is the implied association he makes between SL and the cloud, linking the security of virtual worlds to cloud security. Maybe he didn’t mean to make this association (although the post is called “Collaboration in the Cloud,” so I have to assume) but I’d have to disagree with this association for a number of reasons, primarily the use of the term cloud in relation to anything consumer driven. I know, I’m a stickler for using the right word to describe the right thing; what can I say? Someone sitting down and logging into Second Life isn’t logging into the cloud, they’re logging into a MMOG to play a game, not to invoke a cloud-based service. This would be like saying every time I log into my online banking site I’m invoking Cloud Banking. I’m not. My banking site may be calling methods and functions from the cloud, but I don’t see that. I see a web page. Or when I pull up my cable DVR’s “On Demand” option; this isn’t called the Cable Cloud or the VoD Cloud. Just because it sends a packet outside my house doesn’t mean it’s a cloud service.
Maybe it’s took picky, but I think this is how technology terms are co-opted in the first place and become way too overused. Cloud Computing has a very specific definition, as does Cloud Security. But there is no such thing as Cloud Gaming (nor Cloud Banking), and just because an internet-based game has security flaws doesn’t mean that those are Cloud Security issues. They’re just security flaws in software. The first time an analyst asks me my opinions on how Second Life is impacting the cloud or Cloud Security, I’m going to literally blow a gasket, right there on the floor, and coredump screaming “Does not compute!”
Enterprises and Service Providers have a Cloud; consumers have the Internet. They’re not in the same ballpark, not even in the same freakin’ game. Let’s call a spade a spade and the cloud the cloud. Or maybe I’m just grump because it’s Friday afternoon and 72 deg outside in the Pacific Northwest and I’m inside reading instead of relaxing on the beach with my dog, picking out Cloud Animals. 
July 19th, 2008 at 2:57 am
There does seem to be some confusion about the Cloud Computing definition though, see e.g. http://www.gridtoday.com/grid/2422484.html. Could you share your definition with us?
Regards, Bert
July 19th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Bert,
You can read how I define the cloud and cloud services here:
http://thevirtualdc.com/?p=87
Part 1 of a 3 part posting series talking about the cloud. Thanks for the GridToday link; I hadn’t seen that. I really like Todd Abrams (Layered Technologies) definition and take on cloud computing. For me, I try to boil virtualization technologies down to their most basic definitions and then build up. I think solutions like EC2 are great solutions, but they offer cloud solutions built on top of many layers (VMs, load balancers, APIs, etc). So to define something like EC2 as cloud computing it too vague for me. It’s like saying “What is an engine? It’s the Honda that drives you to work.” The engine is a critical component but it’s not defined by the car manufacturer (if that makes sense :).
July 19th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Alan,
Thank you for the clarification! If I understand you correctly, your definition doesn’t really seem to care whether the Computing is centralized or distributed, as long as it’s “outside the management domain of your current data center”. For Todd Abrams however, this seems to be an important aspect, saying “I don’t see how you can say you’ve got cloud computing if you have a single location”.
I wouldn’t want to be too picky though
July 19th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Blake,
You are correct. At it’s minimum, I’m defining a cloud service as one that’s not part of your management domain (I would even say outside your data center, but that brings up questions of multiple data centers, etc) and that’s accessed and managed through some type of transparent layer, such as an API. I also define virtualization as anything that removes the binding between the application/process/running state and hardware. So a virtualized cloud service must be removed from the bindings of hardware in the data center and obfuscated with something like an API.
I do, however, like Todd’s extension into more distributed systems, but I wouldn’t go quite that far for me. For example, if I use Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service, I don’t care where or what their architecture looks like. If it’s one DC, or even sitting on just one hard drive, I don’t care b/c I’ve removed that level of management from my plate. But again, I do understand where he’s coming from.
-Alan
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:59 am
Added. Nice work on this one. Btw, my blog is dofollow, stop by and grab a link. Walter