Editor's voice: Who will benefit from cloud computing

The rise of the

Cloud computing model has given us a glimpse of the incentives for a new wave of technological renewal, as well as the creation of countless new market opportunities, and who will be the beneficiaries of this change? Big Macs in the IT and communications markets? or the innovative small business?

　　Over the past 40 years, the development of it technology can be divided into three stages: the first generation is the host mode, the IBM SNA as the representative, its advantages can be controlled, but also means inflexible and not easy to expand, restricting the development of the application layer; the second generation is client/server mode, The leader of this era is the network equipment manufacturer represented by Cisco, the advantages of this model are obvious flexibility, but the disadvantages are also obvious, the network is growing, complex and dispersed, resulting in the inability to manage and consume too much; the third-generation computing model can be said to be a return to the first generation, namely the cloud computing model. It operates, manages the cloud computing and host mode is similar, because based on http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13883.html "> Virtualization technology, in the objective decentralized equipment and flexibility."   With the wide acceptance of cloud computing, the application of virtualization technology is more and more in-depth, especially the server virtualization, application has been very common, to a certain extent, the traditional switch posed a challenge.   First is the data exchange of the internal virtual machine in the data center, VMware's vswitch technology has solved this problem well. Then how do the virtual machines between the data centers Exchange? At present, there are two kinds of technology--vmware proposed by Vxlan and Dell, Microsoft and other manufacturers jointly proposed Nvgre. The two camps have already submitted standard drafts to the IETF, and Dell now supports both.   The most headache is the third challenge of virtualization: After a large number of virtual machines, how to control them, simplifying the network Exchange plane, it is necessary to solve the problem of the network to work properly. Obviously, the key to solving the problem is how to separate the control layer and data layer in the existing switch, using standardized and open means for unified management.   New opportunities have emerged: SDN (softwaredefinednetworking) and OpenFlow are now considered key technologies to address this problem. The standard organization ONF (Open Network Foundation) is standardizing SDN and OpenFlow, while giants such as HP, Dell and NEC have already launched a OpenFlow-enabled exchange device.   But OpenFlow is a standard open technology, and the architecture of existing switch vendors is private and closed. It's like the difference between a Wintel x86 system and an IBM minicomputer system. It seems impossible for firms such as Cisco and Juniper to abandon their existing systems and adopt OpenFlow. On this level, some of the internet market, which has no "historical baggage" to Dell and NEC, has a future ahead of them.   Of course, it's not conclusive,After all, the appearance of OpenFlow only a few years time, from the laboratory to the market, OpenFlow still have a long way to go. But after all, change has begun.  

(editor: Heritage)