CHAPTER 1

THE CLOUD REVOLUTION

In works of art, from the photos of Ansel Adams to the paintings of ancientChinese artists, clouds have often been given tangible form and purpose. InAdams's arid West, they served as a backdrop to granite peaks, holding out thepromise of rain. To the Chinese, an all-encompassing mist allows specialfeatures to emerge out of the mountain landscape, or sometimes there will be aseries of ridges as far as the eye can see, their bases cloaked inclouds—an illusion of infinity.

For many years the cloud has played a more prosaic role among the squares,rectangles, and circles of the architecture diagrams of technology projects, butits meaning has been ambiguous. "The cloud" was a euphemism for everything thatwas beyond the data center or out on the network. The action that affected theproject at hand was in the data center; the cloud was a mishmash of remotelyconnected parts and network protocols that didn't have much to do with theimmediate problem. No matter how nonartistic the systems architect, he couldalways represent the cloud—an offhand, squiggly circle in the backgroundof his scheme.

As business use of the Internet has grown, the cloud has moved from a throwawaysymbol in the architect's diagram to something more substantial and specific: ithas become the auxiliary computing, supplied through Web site applications andWeb services, such as credit checks and customer address lookups, that backed upthe operation of standard business applications in the enterprise data center.Businesses built around Web services, such as Google, Amazon.com, and eBay,produced a new type of data center that was more standardized, more automated,and built from mass-produced personal computer parts. Access to these datacenters was kept under wraps for several years as their builders sought tomaintain a competitive advantage. As the notion caught on that it was possibleto provide more and more powerful services over the Internet, cloud computingcame to mean an interaction between an end user, whether a consumer or abusiness computing specialist, and one of these services "in the cloud."

When Microsoft appeared on the scene determined to stake a larger claim to thisnew form of computing, it started talking about its facilities in Chicago andIreland as a new type of data center. Google, which played a key role inestablishing the type, began illustrating key features of its data centers, andby late 2008 it was clear that the term cloud meant not only making useof innovative computing services out on the Internet, but sometimes gainingaccess through the Internet to computers in a powerful new type of data centerwith large resources available. Part of the appeal of using this type of datacenter was that you could pay for only what you used. The cloud had moved frontand center in thinking about the next wave of computing. The resource mightstill be described as being located in a squiggly circle, but oh, what aresource. The cloud deals with customers on a broad scale and with a level ofsophisticated automation never seen before. The vague goings-on out there in thecloud had taken on more significance and heft.

Even so, it is still difficult to summarize in a nutshell for the CEO, COO, andCFO what your company might do with cloud computing. Those who have watched theprogression just described sense that something big is under way, but it's hardto explain what it's all about with a sound bite. Rather, there is a large-scaleexperiment under way on many fronts to determine what might be done "in thecloud."

Many people agree that cloud computing is the next phase of business andpersonal computing, but why call it "cloud"? The term is ambiguous or, worse,amorphous. For 25 years, during tours of duty at Computerworld, DigitalNews, Interactive Week, and InformationWeek, I've watched visitorsdraw the cloud in whiteboard diagrams. It was the discard part of the picture.But first, what exactly is the cloud, and how did it go from something that youcould ignore to something that we can't seem to stop talking about?

Defining the Cloud

There are many definitions of the cloud—too many for any one to haveachieved a rigorous meaning. It's most specifically described as software as aservice, where a software application can be accessed online, as inSalesforce.com, Google Apps, or Zoho. It also takes the form of infrastructureas a service, where a user goes to a site such as Amazon Web Services' ElasticCompute Cloud (EC2) and rents time on a server. It also takes the form ofplatform as a service, where certain tools are made available with which tobuild software to run in the host cloud. These descriptors are common currencyin technology circles and have been defined by a government agency, the NationalInstitute of Standards and Technology. They have currency, but I don't put muchstock in them. I think they are temporary snapshots of a rapidly shiftingformation.

Nevertheless, the marketers have heard the buzz, and suddenly they want todescribe what they're doing as part of the cloud. "Cloud Computing: RealApproach or Buzzword Bingo?" asked the headline in an electronic newslettercrossing my screen recently.

So it's possible today that when the CEO asks his technical staff what's allthis he's hearing about the cloud, the IT directors and Web site managers willstart describing its parts, then argue over what's required in the cloud,disagreeing immediately and sometimes vigorously. The corporate IT staff knowsthe cloud when it sees it; it just can't tell you what it is.

The CEO has heard that the cloud is "the next phase of Internet computing," butwhat that means is now more muddled than ever. He shakes his head as he walksaway. If the members of his staff are arguing about what it is, chances are thatthey're not going to be able to tell him the thing he most wants to know: how'sit going to affect him and the business.

Lately he's heard that it's what consumers are doing as they increasingly usesmart handheld devices to download products such as iTunes. With seeming whimsy,these consumers turn some companies into huge winners, while bypassing others.So a subsidiary meaning of "cloud" is the next phase...