N news
Technology | DOI: 10.1145/1364782.1364786
cloud computing
As software migrates from local PCs to distant Internet servers,
users and developers alike go along for the ride.
THE GREEk MYTHS tell of creatures plucked from the surface of the Earth and enshrined as constellations
in the night sky. Something
similar is happening today in the world
of computing. Data and programs are
being swept up from desktop PCs and
corporate server rooms and installed
in “the compute cloud.”
Whether it’s called cloud computing or on-demand computing, software
as a service, or the Internet as platform,
the common element is a shift in the
geography of computation. When you
create a spreadsheet with the Google
Docs service, major components of the
software reside on unseen computers,
whereabouts unknown, possibly scattered across continents.
PHO TOGRAPH B Y RICHARD MORGENS TEIN
The shift from locally installed programs to cloud computing is just getting under way in earnest. Shrink-wrap
software still dominates the market
and is not about to disappear, but the
focus of innovation indeed seems to be
ascending into the clouds. Some substantial fraction of computing activity
is migrating away from the desktop and
the corporate server room. The change
will affect all levels of the computational ecosystem, from casual user to
software developer, IT manager, even
hardware manufacturer.
In a sense, what we’re seeing now
is the second coming of cloud computing. Almost 50 years ago a similar
transformation came with the creation
of service bureaus and time-sharing
systems that provided access to computing machinery for users who lacked
a mainframe in a glass-walled room
down the hall. A typical time-sharing
service had a hub-and-spoke configuration. Individual users at terminals
communicated over telephone lines
with a central site where all the computing was done.
When personal computers arrived
in the 1980s, part of their appeal was
the promise of “liberating” programs
and data from the central computing
center. (Ted Nelson, the prophet of hypertext, published a book titled
Computer Lib/Dream Machines in 1974.) Individuals were free to control their own
computing environment, choosing
software to suit their needs and customizing systems to their tastes.
But PCs in isolation had an obvious
weakness: In many cases the sneaker-net was the primary means of collaboration and sharing. The client-server
model introduced in the 1980s offered
a central repository for shared data
while personal computers and work-stations replaced terminals, allowing
individuals to run programs locally.
In the current trend, the locus of