Clouds getting confusing? TMNA? (too many new acronyms) Cloud is easy. What is the cloud?
Quick definition of the cloud: The Cloud is accessing another computer through a network.
See how easy that was? You are even doing the cloud right now (and, well every day) yet it needs hype. There is an increasing level of hype around the concept of the cloud, many new seminars, meetings and vibe as the common user discovers the network 🙂
Sometimes all this hype can become confusing as techies would think they need to know something new, or have missed some new technology.
INMA (it needs more acronyms) So, enter VM, IAAS, PAAS and SAAS (these are also easy)
VM – Virtual machine (many operating systems on one cpu)
IAAS – Infrastructure as a service (eg eucalyptus http://eucalyptus.com)
PAAS – Programming as a service (Providing the development and runtime environment)
SAAS – Software as a service (Like http://cubit.co.za was – although now open source and free)
The current hype around cloud is mostly the new technology around dividing, allocating, assigning and sharing limited hardware resources among many simultaneous users. Most of the tech is developed in the IAAS area, as that is the area where resource management is controlled from. Leading IAAS apps (open source of course) is http://eucalyptus.com
Interesting but unknown ‘CLOUD’ facts: Did you know – The very first (SAAS) cloud software as a service was Cubit Accounting a South African development? (In 2001 already…)
