The Philippine Online Chronicles

“The Cloud” or Cloud Computing is one of the hottest buzzwords the past few years. John Gruber calls The Cloud, “Ubiquity. Accessing your data, your stuff, from anywhere, using a wide variety of devices, software, and interfaces -- GUI at the desk, touch on the couch, voice on the go. "The cloud" is effectively an augmentation of our brains' memories.”

And yet The Cloud means different things to different types of people. It means differently for so many people that it is confusing for non-power user. So what is it, exactly?

You know how real clouds— the fluffy ones up in the world so high are classed in different types? Like there are altocumulus, altostratus, cirrocumulus, cirrus, cirrostratus, and so on? Well, there seems to be a similar case for cloud computing.

The first kind of cloud is Apple’s iCloud. Second is the type of cloud that Google’s, Amazon, and Dropbox’s vision of “The Cloud” as the big hard drive in the sky. The third is the “The Cloud” that pertains to websites, web apps, web services— the software-as-a-service or the platform-as-a-service model being advocated by the likes of Amazon, Rackspace, TxtVia and countless others. Let’s talk about each in greater detail.

Apple’s iCloud

Apple recently launched iCloud. It is a service that makes, or at least for now attempts to “hide” the complexities of the technology. What Apple is attempting is to interconnect all of its iDevices— iOS and Macs— and all your media from email to docs, to music, and videos to make it all appear that they just exist when you want them, and when you need them.

So for Apple, it doesn’t matter if you’re on the MRT traveling from Makati to QC. If you turn on your iPhone, and connect to the Internet you should be able to get that word document you were editing in Pages, or download that song you just paid for from iTunes on your PC.

For Apple, iCloud is the center of your digital universe. No longer is it the PC. Once upon a time, Steve Jobs dubbed the Mac (and the PC), the center of your digital hub. With iCloud you can see Jobs’ vision for the living room. In fact, it is quite wrong to assume that Jobs was focusing on the living room in the same way other companies are. For Apple, everywhere should be where you can get to your media. This is why Jobs is transition you away from iTunes as the center of the universe. It is fitting that in the Post-PC era, “The Cloud” becomes the hub of the universe.

The Dropbox

Google, Amazon and Dropbox, and even sites like MediaFire have a somewhat different perspective. For these companies (and others like them), “The Cloud” is your big storage locker in the sky. The Cloud is a hard drive that makes it easier for people to pass on large files. That’s the case with Dropbox, which says it is like our pocket, it is the one place where you keep your stuff. So whenever you go, wherever you go, you take it with you.

The difference between this approach and Apple’s, is design. Dropbox uses the classic file system approach. Store stuff on the folder, and that folder gets shared across your Mac, PC, mobile devices. Apple’s way on the other hand hides this fact. It stores files per app. So for example you were writing a Word doc in pages, you don’t need to know that that file resides in /User/me/Documents. Nope, it hides itself inside the icon thingy you see on your computer. So when iCloud syncs your files on iOS devices it’s there, and it hides the fact that there is a file system. It is a little Zen, but the point is, for Apple File Systems are things people don’t need to worry about, and for Dropbox, the classic File System is the backbone of its success.

This isn’t to say the Apple way— as it is right now works flawlessly. Many would point out that iCloud so far riddled with bugs. To the point that upset users are calling it, “Apple’s Vista”. Many users for example pointed out that their apps ate presentations when shared on iCloud, but that’s the dream and the philosophy behind it is the same idea behind every other Apple product: ubiquity.

So far, Dropbox seems to be the most simple, and yet effective way when you want to have a storage locker in the sky. I for one, use it religiously to mirror files across multiple computers. As I write this entry for example is automatically saved to my plaintext folder, which is on dropbox that is synced to my iOS devices, and other computers, both Mac and PC.

The Service

For businesses and the big boys— the Cloud is a service, or for some companies act as a platform-as-a-service. The Internet is the one big pipe that connects everyone and everything. So for example, once upon a time a scientist trying to unlock the human gnome project would need really powerful computers to do so, and really loads of cash to build a supercomputer? Well, Amazon’s servers provide cloud supercomputing. A years’ worth of computing time using Amazon’s 880-node cluster amounts to US$4,290 with 41.82 TerraFlops of power. You can of course build your own US$2,500 supercomputer, at far slower speed— 20 Gigaflop of computing power. Every year commodity does goes down so much that computing power goes up, but there’s the trade off.

Other companies such as Rackspace, and MediaTemple provide web hosting (Amazon does this too!) for millions of customers worldwide. They’ve turned web servers, and web software— and the databases into commodity. Buy a server service from them and you get machines running windows or linux with the accompanying web server. So you can just start building a website in no time at all.

Lastly, there is something called, platform-as-a-service. TxtVia is an example of this. They specialize in platform-as-a-service finance technology. TxtVia is a leading provider of transaction processing technology, and they have a very active call center and software development office in the Philippines.

John Gage coined the phrase, “The Network is the computer”. It was the motto of a little company called Sun Microsystems that was acquired by Oracle. It was ahead of its time, that term but it is an apt description of what iCloud, Dropbox, software-as-a-service, and platform-as-a-service is all about. Simply put, “The Cloud,” is computing as a service. It is the culmination of that vision to make computing a commodity, the network as a computer and beyond it, another piece of the puzzle that makes computing totally ubiquitous.

Image credit: iCloud, courtesy Apple

Video credit: Dropbox, courtesy YouTube