Cloud Computing

Microsoft: Cloud need only be open surface, not open source


Microsoft is more open — at least on the surface — and that’s all that matters in the cloud era, one company exec maintains.
At Oscon 2011, Gianugo Rabellino, Senior Director for Open Source Communities at Microsoft, said as long as the APIs, protocols and standards for the cloud are open, that is, open surface, customers don’t care about the underlying platform.


Being a huge computer nerd, and former computer programmer before all the programming jobs left town for china or other dollar a day countries, I have my opinions on Cloud Computing.

It's worthless.

Where to begin. What is Cloud Computing ?

Cloud Computing is a marketing term to take a very old idea , shine it up , and make it new and exciting. The idea itself is that all your data and computation goes on in some unspecified server on the other side of the world so you don't have to have big computers on site.

The problems are two fold.

First, you're no longer in charge of your data. It's now under the laws of some foriegn country that has a vested interest in letting it's home countries violate your privacy on a regular basis (Yes, I'm talking about the united states).

Second, computers are dirt cheap. So is storage space.

At christmas this past year I went and I bought a two tera byte (thats two THOUSAND gigabytes) drive that just plugs into my usb port on my computer. No special drivers or anything it just looks like a really REALLY big usb memory stick. It was about 120$ . Brand new.

I have a new lap top. Nothing special , it was 600$ brand new.

These prices may cause problems for a private individual , but we're talking shoe string budget for a start up business. A lap top and a back up drive and a desk in your basement and you're on your way here , no cloud computing required.


What exactly are you saving on , precisely , anyways ? Where's the benifit for you for going cloud ?

You can get free copies of office products ? Ever hear of open source ? They give away a copy of "Open Office" free these days. Word processer, spread sheet , the works. You wanna pay microsoft huge sums of money or you want the same thing for free ?

At most you'll need one computer with microsoft office on it for translation purposes for those die hard customers that demand you have everything they have (I've been on that treadmill before ...they upgrade, they scream at you for incompetence because you didn't upgrade ... then you wind up spending a fortune upgrading to get something that does no more than what you already had ... all so you can read stupid internal memo's ...bleh !)

Tech support ! They do your tech support for you !

Not these days. Every worker in your office still needs a desk and a computer , right ? You still got a lot of computers on site and they aint doing tech support for that. You're still hireing techies out of college or university or whatever to keep the place running. Exact numbers vary depending on whether people are just running word processers or doing something strange and weird on their computers. (I saw one place where there was one desk with a dozen computers and monitors, and one guy running the show ... lot of tech support needed for that one station ... lot of tech support)

Cloud computer is the old client server architecture and it died long ago for a very good reason. The price of computers dropped through the floor. It died, and it should stay dead.