Cloud computing is missing in action -- at least, if you define "cloud computing" as more than just accessing services over a public network. That's the unpleasant discovery we made when looking to provision a development site for a new service we’re testing.
You see, we’ve developed this custom PHP application and have only a vague idea as to how much of a pig it is and how much server, storage, and bandwidth is needed for it to perform properly. But we do know this much: For our test-and-dev site we don’t need a dedicated server -- no way.
So we contacted our giant hosting firm, which claims to be part of the largest telecommunications company on the planet -- and yes, we still do business with them -- who said we have five choices for managed services: three virtualized solutions that are cost effective and two dedicated, non-virtualized solutions that cost way too much for what we want.
Of the three virtualized solutions the telco offered, we were told we could choose one with 40 Gbytes of storage, one with 60 Gbytes, and one with 80 Gbytes.
As a business person, this made me livid. My kid’s five-year-old laptop has more storage than this gorilla offered me. I said, “Can we get more storage?” And the large, rich, lumbering telecommunications firm told our IT guy that we have one choice and one choice only if we want more storage: upgrade to a more expensive dedicated service.
Even though we probably don’t need more than 80 Gbytes of storage for our test-and-dev site, I immediately issued a directive to start looking for alternatives. Of course, the big, slow-moving behemoth service provider couldn't care less about my concerns, because that’s their “policy.” (I'm thinking they’re destined for the same fate as the big, slow-moving airlines that don’t understand customer service either.)
This leads me to the cloud. A lot of vendor marketing poopadoodle suggests the cloud is any service available over a public network. But I think the bar should be raised higher. To me, cloud computing is a next-generation computing model that allows organizations, small to large, to tap into a network of compute power, storage, and bandwidth and "dial up" resources as needed to suit their business needs.
By definition, cloud services should be flexible. If I want 200 Gbytes of storage instead of 40 Gbytes, then charge me just for that upgrade and I’ll happily pay. But don’t force me to buy all the other junk that you want to throw at me because it fits neatly into your "policy."
So I asked our IT people to investigate EC2 from Amazon Web Services LLC . For my money, trends are established by trendsetters, and in this case it’s Amazon and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) that are paving the way with services, not traditional hosting companies delivering services in canned, inflexible packages.
Amazon has one of the most reliable networks on the planet, and as a Web 2.0 company, I figured we should be utilizing a cloud computing infrastructure anyway because it’s cool. My next order was "Make it so." [Note to self: time to get an iPhone, too.]
Turns out it’s not that simple. EC2 is awesome if you’re a rocket scientist, which one of our IT people is. But when I said, "How will we support the infrastructure?” the answer was: “I’ll leave my cell phone on 24x7.” No thanks!
I Googled “EC2 hosting,” thinking there must be people out there providing services around EC2. There are, but I’m not going for it, as they’re far too immature. I then Googled "cloud computing hosting" and got many more hits… but none that inspired me.
So we crawled back, hat in hand, to the big, lethargic, indifferent hosting company and said, "We’ll take the #2 to go, please.”
You can check out the result at http://wikibondev.org. I hope you crash the site and totally overwhelm the disk space, because, as they say in the Web 2.0 business, if you don’t have scaling problems, you’re not growing fast enough.
But I'm dreaming of the day when I can solve this problem with a universal clicker...
— David Vellante Co-Founder of ITCentrix Inc. , Barometrix, and The Wikibon Project
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