A few small concepts of cloud computing

Many people always like to hype the concept, if the concept of unfortunate interpretation, it will not let us accept it. Cloud computing is almost a concept, although in a sense it is like a once popular concept in the industry, but does not prevent it from becoming the hottest IT IT vocabulary.

From IBM, Google, Amazon to Dell, and Microsoft (and, of course, a long list of company names later, if possible), these companies are sparing no effort in pushing the notion of cloud computing and from their own perspective Cloud computing and related applications.

Although reporters have previously interviewed cloud-related experts and wrote several articles on cloud computing concepts, they still wanted to find an opportunity to explore the concept of cloud computing in more depth. This time, the reporter specifically contacted Dr. Wang, Global Vice President of IBM Corporation, hoping to help clarify several concepts of cloud computing with his help.

Cloud is the inevitable development of Web services

In many people's minds, the concept of cloud computing is just like its name, it appears out of thin air. However, King Matt said that cloud computing is an inevitable result of the development of Web services to a certain stage.

King Matt believes that before the various companies can send many services over the Internet, such as booking, maps, search, as these various services increased, the reliability of the service, the requirements of the availability of a sharp increase. By clustering, etc., it has been difficult to provide sufficient performance, then it must be achieved by building data centers everywhere. For large companies such as Google and Amazon, the ability to build data centers scattered across continents and the ability to have excess capacity; other small companies do not have the ability, then Google or Amazon can own The infrastructure capacity as a service to the relevant users, this is the origin of cloud computing.

For some large multinational companies, they need someone to help them build the corresponding Internet-based infrastructure services capabilities, which is the meaning of IBM Blue Cloud computing products.

Different fundamentals lead to different cloud concepts

Almost overnight after IBM put forward the concept of cloud computing, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other companies are preaching their own cloud computing products, and are basically very different. In this regard, King Matt said that there is no one who is right or who is wrong, we all can be called cloud computing, but due to the different basis of the respective cloud computing will lead to the current cloud computing development in different directions and concepts.

According to King Matt, the biggest business for Google is search engine, whose earliest purpose of cloud computing was to optimize the performance of its search engine. After developing its infrastructure, Services provided to users, but it loads a lot of services above, including word processing, maps, image processing, it should be said that Google's cloud computing concept is close to an application cloud.

Amazon as an e-commerce company, which provides EC2 and S3 products, is to provide infrastructure as a service to users, allowing others to install their own applications. For SalesForce, which started as a SalesForce.com SaaS site, it needed to provide a unified interface for others to take SalesForce's services and expand their ecosystem.

King Matt said that most of IBM's software products are middleware, then, for IBM, it is hoped that applications are based on the Internet to submit (SaaS represented), IBM will be based on the Internet to provide middleware , This is the fundamental starting point of IBM cloud computing.

Cloud computing is far greater than virtualization

When the reporter visited the IBM China Cloud Computing Center, he had a demonstration of the cloud computing function. At that time, the IBM technical manager demonstrated how to request the user to allocate cloud computing resources and allocate resources, and the server that the reporter had previously learned The way in which virtualization allocates resources is very similar, and in fact, IBM's cloud computing really divides server resources through Xen's virtualization technology. So what is the relationship between cloud computing and server virtualization?

In this regard Matt King said that the reporter saw the functional demonstration is only part of the cloud computing content, which involves quite a lot of content. For example, he said, is like entering a shopping mall, which may have restaurants, if you only enter the restaurant dining, and then came out and said the so-called shopping centers and restaurants is one thing, this shows that is wrong.

"Cloud computing is not just about virtualizing your infrastructure, there's actually a platform for application layer submission, and much more." King Matt said. IBM just set up a framework for users, which includes a variety of infrastructure, how users make use of the cloud computing architecture, by its own decision.

IBM not only provides Blue Cloud products

It has been previously said that IBM's cloud computing is mainly for enterprises to provide its own cloud computing infrastructure, rather than as Google or Amazon as a common cloud infrastructure services. King Matt said IBM actually set up a data center in North Carolina to provide cloud computing services.

King Matt said that IBM's data center will be completed in the fourth quarter of 2009, not only using the latest IBM technology, but also the building itself will use environmentally friendly materials; when put into operation, it will provide different types of external companies with cloud Computing services, IBM cloud computing services to achieve the size of the number of customers.

Cloud computing does not compete with the Internet

At a ceremony to set up Beijing Cloud Computing Center in June of this year, IBM executives once said that cloud computing will be as important as the Internet in the next 12 years. In this regard, the reporter said that puzzled, why cloud computing will be compared with the Internet? Matt king believes that this may be the translation of the mistake. He said that in fact cloud computing is to promote the development of the second generation of the Internet, rather than compete with the Internet. "With the Internet, we can drive cloud computing, and cloud computing is also an important driver for the next phase of the Internet," King Matt said.