The Wisdom of Clouds - Latest Comments in Watch out for Cisco, kids!

Re: Watch out for Cisco, kids!

toddh — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:55:17 -0000

> Networks have become so fast that in many instances it is
> practical to send the the data to the program

Is this really true though? Once you follow data from user space to user space the latencies are lot higher than the speed of light suggests. So, operating on local RAM is still a big win from a latency perspective. Operationally the network is the computer, but perhaps not computationally.

Re: Watch out for Cisco, kids!

jamesurquhart — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:13:55 -0000

Fair enough. It is quite true that the proprietary world continues to look for "lock-in" approaches, paying homage to open standards where necessary for integration, but not always for extension or modification.

I hope I make that clear in this post...I am indeed worried about how Cisco would react if they did indeed take a large portion of the private cloud market. The idea that they would help competing firms leverage their success to enhance the overall market just doesn't seem to fit their personality.

Then again, that's just the tension between capitalism and community, isn't it?

Re: Watch out for Cisco, kids!

Roland Judas — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:51:06 -0000

James, great article on Cisco. I have cisco on my radar for a long time, beeing a big IOS fan. I'm still not sure if any single component e.g. the switching fabrics, the network, the storage or the server will ever be able to be THE center of such an structure or concept like cloud computing. There are loads of other examples were this idea ran out of control.
The big "server" vendors nowadays are no longer selling bare metal, but loads of software, consulting and concepts like container datacenters and enterprise clouds, more or less as closed shop, but this situation is getting better.
My opinion is, that solely the interfaces, the standards and precise conecpts are the keystone. If they are designed and published in a proper way, in an open way so some community can participate, we will really see the future of IT. If we give up the field to competing vendors, we might not even understand terms like "cloud computing".

Just my 0,02 €

Re: Watch out for Cisco, kids!

jamesurquhart — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 01:31:59 -0000

Thanks, samj.

I read your post and I you make a compelling case. I think I disagree with your assertion that the term cloud is a metaphore for the Internet, however. For me, "cloud" represents shared network-based resources in general, including the concept of a "private cloud" which may or may not be on the larger 'Net.

This comes from more of an application architecture point of view than a market segmentation or even infrastructure architecture one. That being said, thank's for giving me much to think about.

Re: Watch out for Cisco, kids!

samj — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:09:21 -0000

Nice work James, though I would tend to call a 'private cloud' an 'intelligent grid' - there is just too much to be gained from having access to all those other applications out there, and in reality I think we'll see these 'private clouds' being connected to 'The Cloud' (a metaphor for the Internet) anyway.

Here's what I came up with after spending a few days on the topic:

"Cloud Computing is the realisation of Internet ('Cloud') based development and use of computer technology ('Computing') delivered by an ecosystem of providers."

2,000 word explanation for it at my blog.

Re: Watch out for Cisco, kids!

Aneel — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:08:47 -0000

Brocade is going down the same road--though they obviously think storage is the center of the universe and spend a lot less time talking about network virtualization, vm portability, orchestration and a few other things than they should.

Re: Watch out for Cisco, kids!

Douglas Gourlay — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:33:04 -0000

James, great write-up. I forwarded to our Data Center team so they can all read it- provides a great overview of where we are going and I love how you describe the role of the network in the Data Center.