That Mysterious Cloud as a service

There is so much talk about the cloud. This talk about white fluffy stuff can get very confusing if you don't know what the cloud really is. To explain a short Youtube video will describe the basic concept:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae_DKNwK_ms

So hoping that the video changed your view a bit lets just say the cloud is a bunch of services. By using someone else as a service all maintaining, tech staff, upgrades, etc are handled by the provider while you just use their service. All you as their client do is pay a fee to keep their service going.

What is interesting to note about cloud services is the fact that computers in the beginning started off in a cloud scenario...albeit a very small and local cloud. You had your main frame with all the operations and storage centrally located on it. Then you had a client that just displayed the info from the Main frame on a screen. The client didn't do any work other than display the info while the mainframe did everything else. In essence this is what the cloud is. Now there may not be huge mainframes that are room sized to provide you a cloud service but nowadays the cloud could be as simple as a desktop hosting software in a remote location anywhere in the world and others can log on and use the service for a fee.

So the cloud is just a bunch of services hosted at some other location. You pay for the service to work and continue. Us techies like to categorize things so we come up with different ways to show the different services available. Here are the three categories:

• SaaS: Software as a serivce. This is a service that can provide many different functions. If  you use Gmail you are using a form of SaaS. Reading this blog it is a form of SaaS. Watching Youtube is a form of SaaS. There is a very blurry line between what is and what isn't SaaS nowadays. Lets just say if your computer doesn't host the service or doesn't process the entirety of the service you are using a form of SaaS .A good example of SaaS is Google docs or Office 360. You just sign in and use with no need to install. Another good example is the comparison between the old Outlook and gmail. You didn't have to install gmail to get gmail working where as Outlook is an office product that you installed on a machine. Dropbox, google drive, windows sky drive...they are all SaaS. SaaS covers storage, processing power, software and many other services. SaaS could even function as your networking equipment.

• PaaS: Platform of a Service. PaaS is used by us developers. Instead of storing and downloading all the coding we use to make SaaS services, we just login and use a PaaS service that has it all there. A good example here is Facebook apps. A developer can code an entire app using Facebooks "codes" called APIs.

• IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service. This is where it comes down to virtualization. With special software we can use a 1 computer and turn it into hundreds of slower, simple computers. This is great when needing to stress test a software program. This idea is the same idea behind putting a shoe on a robot and having it press in a certain area for a billion cycles to see how much ware happens. IaaS allows us to stress test the software program so we know it won't break when it becomes popular. IaaS also allows for all the different types of computers out there to be used without actually having those computers right next to the developer. So the software can be tested in Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, etc and see how it performs. 

Why use the cloud?

• Cost to you as client and for your business. Yes this is a fee you will have to pay for as long as you use the service. In most scenarios though this simple fee will look like a lot, but will definantly make up the difference if lets say you buy your own server and have to spend your time updating, troubleshooting, and sometimes replacing it.
• No need for upkeep. No updates, no downtime, no wasted time.
•  "pay and play" for the most part. You just pay for a service and start using it. 

What the cloud is not:

• free. There is a cost. Even if you don't see it you do have a cost.
• replacement for your home computer. To access these services you got to have some way of getting to it

What I want to see in cloud computing:

I can imagine a world where whatever computer you sign into you have all your info, personal settings, personal documents, email, etc right when you sign in. In all reality this type of computing is just like our old Mainframe and client scenario. The mainframe or 'cloud' does all the work while the client just displays the results. Think of a kiosk where you just sign in and you can continue where you left off at the last kiosk. Better yet think of a personal device just as fast and powerful as any other computer. With all the processing that would have taken up battery life now is used just to display the results.

So I guess the for fathers of computing got it right and were way ahead of their time with cloud computing. Since then we have made a complete loop. Making a complete all in one system doing all the computation and then now as we come back to the hosted services from one central system.