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Editor's Notes

• #3: The first definition is what IT employees like.
• #5: We’ve had big changes since the time of the mainframes we just saw. The first was client-server computing: the idea that not everything lived in a mainframe, and some things worked well on the desktop. Software like Visicalc—the first spreadsheet—were useful for businesses, even those who couldn’t afford a mainframe.
• #6: A second big change was the Web. This browser-based model made computing accessible to the masses. As a result, it became part of society, and everyone knew how to work it. These days, you don’t have to teach a new hire how to use a web browser: they know what links do; what the back button is; and so on.
• #7: A third change is the move to mobility. This has been bigger overseas, where the mobile phone is the dominant way of accessing the Internet, but it’s still a shift to the always-connected, always-on lifestyles we lead today.
• #8: And now there’s cloud computing. Clouds are as big a shift as client-server, or the web browser, or mobility.
• #9: The step-function nature of dedicated machines doesn’t distribute workload very efficiently.
• #10: Virtualization lets us put many workloads on a single machine
• #11: Once workloads are virtualized, several things happen. First, they’re portable
• #12: Second, they’re ephemeral. That is, they’re short-lived: Once people realize that they don’t have to hoard machines, they spin them up and down a lot more.
• #13: Which inevitably leads to automation and scripting: We need to spin up and down machines, and move them from place to place. This is hard, error-prone work for humans, but perfect for automation now that rack-and-stack has been replaced by point-and-click
• #14: Automation, once in place, can have a front end put on it. That leads to self service.
• #15: These are the foundations on which new IT is being built. Taken together, they’re a big part of the movement towards cloud computing, whether that’s in house or on-demand.
• #16: Okay, so these things mean we have applications that run “virtually” – that is, they’re divorced from the underlying hardware. One machine can do ten things; ten machines can do one thing.
• #17: Okay, so these things mean we have applications that run “virtually” – that is, they’re divorced from the underlying hardware. One machine can do ten things; ten machines can do one thing.
• #18: Okay, so these things mean we have applications that run “virtually” – that is, they’re divorced from the underlying hardware. One machine can do ten things; ten machines can do one thing.
• #19: This is the “technical” definition of cloud computing: virtualized, automated, self-service computing resources. Some people call this a “private cloud”; others think it’s just IT-done-right. Whatever the case, data centers are furiously retooling themselves, much to the enjoyment of companies like VMWare and Citrix.
• #20: Now let’s talk about the other definition -- the populist, popular one that has everyone believing clouds will magically fix IT.
• #21: This is the clouds-as-a-business-model definition. In this, cloud computing is a third-party service.
• #22: All of the things we’ve seen about cloud technology make it possible to deliver computing as a utility -- computing on tap. The virtualization provides a blood/brain barrier between the application the user is running, and the machines on which it runs. Which means it can be a utility.
• #23: The utility promise is compelling. It means you can focus on the thing your business does that makes you special
• #24: And stop worrying about many of the tasks you really didn’t want to do anyway.
• #25: They also remove the false sense of security that came from expense limits.
• #26: These days, supercomputing is easier (and cheaper) than booking a flight.
• #27: Sharing and economies of scale keep costs down. Cloud providers are poised to make the most of these economies of scale. Consider that in July 2008, Microsoft revealed that it had 96,000 servers at the Quincy facility, consuming "about 11 megawatts" More than 80% dedicated to Microsoft's Live Search and the remaining for Hotmail In August, a really good discovery was posted to a blog called "istartedsomething.com":  a screen shot of a software dashboard that illustrates power consumption and server count at each of Microsoft's fifteen data centers, caught in a Microsoft video posted to their web site.
• #28: The move towards the cloud business model has a lot to do with the economies of scale that exist when you can concentrate infrastructure, and put it near dams. (There’s a good—if hotly debated argument—that clouds-as-a-business-model are inevitable, because of the economics.)
• #29: The move towards the cloud business model has a lot to do with the economies of scale that exist when you can concentrate infrastructure, and put it near dams. (There’s a good—if hotly debated argument—that clouds-as-a-business-model are inevitable, because of the economics.)
• #30: The move towards the cloud business model has a lot to do with the economies of scale that exist when you can concentrate infrastructure, and put it near dams. (There’s a good—if hotly debated argument—that clouds-as-a-business-model are inevitable, because of the economics.)
• #31: The move towards the cloud business model has a lot to do with the economies of scale that exist when you can concentrate infrastructure, and put it near dams. (There’s a good—if hotly debated argument—that clouds-as-a-business-model are inevitable, because of the economics.)
• #32: Cloud providers are thinking at a scale that nearly every enterprise can’t compete with. That’s because operating efficiency, and accounting for everything, are core to their business; whereas making widgets is core to yours.
• #33: And this public cloud model is where all the fear is. Most of the time, when you hear someone say they’re concerned about the security of cloud computing, they’re talking about public clouds, and the issues that come with putting your data somewhere virtually but not knowing where it is physically.
• #34: Ultimately, cloud computing is about a significant broadening of the available architectures -- there’s no “big switch”, just a series of new options.
• #35: Ultimately, cloud computing is about a significant broadening of the available architectures -- there’s no “big switch”, just a series of new options.
• #36: Ultimately, cloud computing is about a significant broadening of the available architectures -- there’s no “big switch”, just a series of new options.
• #37: Ultimately, cloud computing is about a significant broadening of the available architectures -- there’s no “big switch”, just a series of new options.
• #38: Ultimately, cloud computing is about a significant broadening of the available architectures -- there’s no “big switch”, just a series of new options.
• #39: Ultimately, cloud computing is about a significant broadening of the available architectures -- there’s no “big switch”, just a series of new options.
• #40: Ultimately, cloud computing is about a significant broadening of the available architectures -- there’s no “big switch”, just a series of new options.
• #41: Ultimately, cloud computing is about a significant broadening of the available architectures -- there’s no “big switch”, just a series of new options.
• #42: Now let’s talk at different architectures
• #43: The first is called Infrastructure as a Service, because you’re renting pieces of (virtual) infrastructure.
• #44: This is what IT people think of when you say “clouds” – virtual machines I can use for just an hour. Here’s Amazon’s “menu” of machines.
• #45: A great example of these clouds in action is what the Washington Post did with Hillarly Clinton’s diaries during her campaign. They needed to get all 17,481 pages of Hillary Clinton’s White House schedule scanned and searchable quickly. Using 200 machines, the Post was able to get the data to reporters in only 26 hours. In fact, the experiment is even more compelling: Desktop OCR took about 30 minutes per page to properly scan, read, resize, and format each page – which means that it would have taken nearly a year, and cost $123 in power, to do the work on a single machine.
• #46: In an IaaS model, you’re getting computers as a utility. The unit of the transaction is a virtual machine. It’s still up to you to install an operating system, and software, or at least to choose it from a list. You don’t really have a machine -- you have an image of one, and when you stop the machine, it vanishes.
• #47: In an IaaS model, you’re getting computers as a utility. The unit of the transaction is a virtual machine. It’s still up to you to install an operating system, and software, or at least to choose it from a list. You don’t really have a machine -- you have an image of one, and when you stop the machine, it vanishes.
• #48: Most applications consist of several machines -- web, app, and database, for example. Each is created from an image, and some, like databases, may use other services from the cloud to store and retrieve data from a disk
• #49: Most applications consist of several machines -- web, app, and database, for example. Each is created from an image, and some, like databases, may use other services from the cloud to store and retrieve data from a disk
• #50: Most applications consist of several machines -- web, app, and database, for example. Each is created from an image, and some, like databases, may use other services from the cloud to store and retrieve data from a disk
• #51: Most applications consist of several machines -- web, app, and database, for example. Each is created from an image, and some, like databases, may use other services from the cloud to store and retrieve data from a disk
• #52: Most applications consist of several machines -- web, app, and database, for example. Each is created from an image, and some, like databases, may use other services from the cloud to store and retrieve data from a disk
• #53: Most applications consist of several machines -- web, app, and database, for example. Each is created from an image, and some, like databases, may use other services from the cloud to store and retrieve data from a disk
• #54: Most applications consist of several machines -- web, app, and database, for example. Each is created from an image, and some, like databases, may use other services from the cloud to store and retrieve data from a disk
• #55: If you run out of capacity, you can upgrade to a bigger machine (which is called “scaling vertically.”)
• #56: If you run out of capacity, you can upgrade to a bigger machine (which is called “scaling vertically.”)
• #57: If you run out of capacity, you can upgrade to a bigger machine (which is called “scaling vertically.”)
• #58: Or you can create several machines at each tier, and use a load balancer to share traffic between them. These kinds of scalable, redundant architectures are common -- nay, recommended -- in a cloud computing world where everything is uncertain.
• #59: Or you can create several machines at each tier, and use a load balancer to share traffic between them. These kinds of scalable, redundant architectures are common -- nay, recommended -- in a cloud computing world where everything is uncertain.
• #60: Or you can create several machines at each tier, and use a load balancer to share traffic between them. These kinds of scalable, redundant architectures are common -- nay, recommended -- in a cloud computing world where everything is uncertain.
• #61: The second kind of cloud is called Platform as a Service. In this model, you don’t think about the individual machines—instead, you just copy your code to a cloud, and run it. You never see the machines. In a PaaS cloud, things are very different.
• #62: - You write your code; often it needs some customization. - That code runs on a share processing platform - Along with other people’s code - The code calls certain functions to do things like authenticate a user, handle a payment, store an object, or move something to a CDN - To keep everything running smoothly (and bill you) the platform has a scheduler (figuring out what to do next) and a governor (ensuring one program doesn’t use up all the resources) as well as a console.
• #63: - You write your code; often it needs some customization. - That code runs on a share processing platform - Along with other people’s code - The code calls certain functions to do things like authenticate a user, handle a payment, store an object, or move something to a CDN - To keep everything running smoothly (and bill you) the platform has a scheduler (figuring out what to do next) and a governor (ensuring one program doesn’t use up all the resources) as well as a console.
• #64: - You write your code; often it needs some customization. - That code runs on a share processing platform - Along with other people’s code - The code calls certain functions to do things like authenticate a user, handle a payment, store an object, or move something to a CDN - To keep everything running smoothly (and bill you) the platform has a scheduler (figuring out what to do next) and a governor (ensuring one program doesn’t use up all the resources) as well as a console.
• #65: - You write your code; often it needs some customization. - That code runs on a share processing platform - Along with other people’s code - The code calls certain functions to do things like authenticate a user, handle a payment, store an object, or move something to a CDN - To keep everything running smoothly (and bill you) the platform has a scheduler (figuring out what to do next) and a governor (ensuring one program doesn’t use up all the resources) as well as a console.
• #66: - You write your code; often it needs some customization. - That code runs on a share processing platform - Along with other people’s code - The code calls certain functions to do things like authenticate a user, handle a payment, store an object, or move something to a CDN - To keep everything running smoothly (and bill you) the platform has a scheduler (figuring out what to do next) and a governor (ensuring one program doesn’t use up all the resources) as well as a console.
• #67: - You write your code; often it needs some customization. - That code runs on a share processing platform - Along with other people’s code - The code calls certain functions to do things like authenticate a user, handle a payment, store an object, or move something to a CDN - To keep everything running smoothly (and bill you) the platform has a scheduler (figuring out what to do next) and a governor (ensuring one program doesn’t use up all the resources) as well as a console.
• #68: - You write your code; often it needs some customization. - That code runs on a share processing platform - Along with other people’s code - The code calls certain functions to do things like authenticate a user, handle a payment, store an object, or move something to a CDN - To keep everything running smoothly (and bill you) the platform has a scheduler (figuring out what to do next) and a governor (ensuring one program doesn’t use up all the resources) as well as a console.
• #69: - You write your code; often it needs some customization. - That code runs on a share processing platform - Along with other people’s code - The code calls certain functions to do things like authenticate a user, handle a payment, store an object, or move something to a CDN - To keep everything running smoothly (and bill you) the platform has a scheduler (figuring out what to do next) and a governor (ensuring one program doesn’t use up all the resources) as well as a console.
• #70: - You write your code; often it needs some customization. - That code runs on a share processing platform - Along with other people’s code - The code calls certain functions to do things like authenticate a user, handle a payment, store an object, or move something to a CDN - To keep everything running smoothly (and bill you) the platform has a scheduler (figuring out what to do next) and a governor (ensuring one program doesn’t use up all the resources) as well as a console.
• #71: - You write your code; often it needs some customization. - That code runs on a share processing platform - Along with other people’s code - The code calls certain functions to do things like authenticate a user, handle a payment, store an object, or move something to a CDN - To keep everything running smoothly (and bill you) the platform has a scheduler (figuring out what to do next) and a governor (ensuring one program doesn’t use up all the resources) as well as a console.
• #72: - You write your code; often it needs some customization. - That code runs on a share processing platform - Along with other people’s code - The code calls certain functions to do things like authenticate a user, handle a payment, store an object, or move something to a CDN - To keep everything running smoothly (and bill you) the platform has a scheduler (figuring out what to do next) and a governor (ensuring one program doesn’t use up all the resources) as well as a console.
• #73: - You write your code; often it needs some customization. - That code runs on a share processing platform - Along with other people’s code - The code calls certain functions to do things like authenticate a user, handle a payment, store an object, or move something to a CDN - To keep everything running smoothly (and bill you) the platform has a scheduler (figuring out what to do next) and a governor (ensuring one program doesn’t use up all the resources) as well as a console.
• #74: Here’s a shot of some code running in Google App Engine. I only know that I’m paying by CPU-hour, or for units like bandwidth, email, or storage. This could be one machine whose CPU was used 8%, or a hundred, or a thousand. I don’t know.
• #75: I can see the logs for my application. But these aren’t for a single machine -- they’re for the application itself, everywhere.
• #76: I can even find out what parts of my code are consuming the most CPU, across all machines.
• #77: And even their latency when served to people.
• #78: It’s a true, pure utility because you pay for what you use.
• #79: This is a very different model from IaaS. On the one hand, it’s more liberating, because you don’t have to worry about managing the machines. On the other hand, it’s more restrictive, because you can only do what the PaaS lets you.
• #80: PaaS platforms impose usage caps and billing tiers. Here’s Google App Engine’s set of quotas and free caps.
• #81: In the case of Salesforce’s Force.com, you have to use an entirely new programming language, called Apex.
• #82: To summarize: two kinds of cloud platforms
• #84: The third kind of cloud is called Software as a Service, or SaaS. Some people argue that this isn’t a cloud at all, just a new way of delivering software. But it’s also what the masses—the non-technologists—think cloud computing means.
• #85: (Personally, I think this makes the term “cloud” synonymous with “web” or “Internet”, and therefore a bit useless.)
• #86: (Personally, I think this makes the term “cloud” synonymous with “web” or “Internet”, and therefore a bit useless.)
• #87: (Personally, I think this makes the term “cloud” synonymous with “web” or “Internet”, and therefore a bit useless.)
• #88: SaaS and PaaS are blurring, too, with the advent of scripting languages. Nobody would argue that Google Apps is a SaaS offering; but now that you can write code for it -- as in this example of a script that sends custom driving directions to everyone in a spreadsheet -- the distinction is less and less clear.
• #89: But the business model of SaaS is the same as PaaS and IaaS: Sell IT on demand, rather than as software or machines.
• #90: It’s the form of cloud computing that gets the most lip service in areas like government, particularly with Google Apps.
• #91: So let’s put this in perspective: There are public and private cloud models. Private ones are about the technology; public ones are about the business of outsourcing at scale.And there are Infrastructure, Platform, and Software offerings—IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. If someone wants to have a conversation with me about clouds, they need to pick a tier, and a private or public model. Then we can compare facts.
• #92: So let’s put this in perspective: There are public and private cloud models. Private ones are about the technology; public ones are about the business of outsourcing at scale.And there are Infrastructure, Platform, and Software offerings—IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. If someone wants to have a conversation with me about clouds, they need to pick a tier, and a private or public model. Then we can compare facts.
• #93: So let’s put this in perspective: There are public and private cloud models. Private ones are about the technology; public ones are about the business of outsourcing at scale.And there are Infrastructure, Platform, and Software offerings—IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. If someone wants to have a conversation with me about clouds, they need to pick a tier, and a private or public model. Then we can compare facts.
• #94: So let’s put this in perspective: There are public and private cloud models. Private ones are about the technology; public ones are about the business of outsourcing at scale.And there are Infrastructure, Platform, and Software offerings—IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. If someone wants to have a conversation with me about clouds, they need to pick a tier, and a private or public model. Then we can compare facts.
• #95: So let’s put this in perspective: There are public and private cloud models. Private ones are about the technology; public ones are about the business of outsourcing at scale.And there are Infrastructure, Platform, and Software offerings—IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. If someone wants to have a conversation with me about clouds, they need to pick a tier, and a private or public model. Then we can compare facts.
• #96: So let’s put this in perspective: There are public and private cloud models. Private ones are about the technology; public ones are about the business of outsourcing at scale.And there are Infrastructure, Platform, and Software offerings—IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. If someone wants to have a conversation with me about clouds, they need to pick a tier, and a private or public model. Then we can compare facts.
• #97: Just knowing these two dimensions makes you smarter than nearly everyone in IT right now. And when you’re discussing IT, insist that others are specific about what they mean. Discussions around privacy and security are vital to public clouds, but most people don’t consider security different in private clouds. Similarly, lock-in is a real concern in PaaS but negligible in IaaS.
• #98: Just knowing these two dimensions makes you smarter than nearly everyone in IT right now. And when you’re discussing IT, insist that others are specific about what they mean. Discussions around privacy and security are vital to public clouds, but most people don’t consider security different in private clouds. Similarly, lock-in is a real concern in PaaS but negligible in IaaS.
• #99: Just knowing these two dimensions makes you smarter than nearly everyone in IT right now. And when you’re discussing IT, insist that others are specific about what they mean. Discussions around privacy and security are vital to public clouds, but most people don’t consider security different in private clouds. Similarly, lock-in is a real concern in PaaS but negligible in IaaS.
• #100: Just knowing these two dimensions makes you smarter than nearly everyone in IT right now. And when you’re discussing IT, insist that others are specific about what they mean. Discussions around privacy and security are vital to public clouds, but most people don’t consider security different in private clouds. Similarly, lock-in is a real concern in PaaS but negligible in IaaS.
• #101: Just knowing these two dimensions makes you smarter than nearly everyone in IT right now. And when you’re discussing IT, insist that others are specific about what they mean. Discussions around privacy and security are vital to public clouds, but most people don’t consider security different in private clouds. Similarly, lock-in is a real concern in PaaS but negligible in IaaS.
• #102: Just knowing these two dimensions makes you smarter than nearly everyone in IT right now. And when you’re discussing IT, insist that others are specific about what they mean. Discussions around privacy and security are vital to public clouds, but most people don’t consider security different in private clouds. Similarly, lock-in is a real concern in PaaS but negligible in IaaS.
• #103: Just knowing these two dimensions makes you smarter than nearly everyone in IT right now. And when you’re discussing IT, insist that others are specific about what they mean. Discussions around privacy and security are vital to public clouds, but most people don’t consider security different in private clouds. Similarly, lock-in is a real concern in PaaS but negligible in IaaS.
• #145: Here’s how to think about migration