The concept of cloud computing has been abused

The concept of cloud computing is becoming more and more popular, but it is also a trend of abuse. Amazon, Google and IBM are the first companies to bring cloud computing to the public eye. Amazon uses S3 and EC2 to provide computing and storage services for small businesses; Google has allowed third parties to run large parallel applications in Google's cloud computing, and IBM has launched a blue cloud program to enable new applications created by people to access the compute node grid of large shares. Their approach makes technology more democratic, so they should use the word cloud.

Now, some people confuse the concepts of cloud computing, WEB 2.0, Software as services (SaaS), online backup, and enterprise grids. Although it's not clear how cloud computing is defined, I think some things should not be called clouds.

SaaS is an application that runs on the infrastructure shared by the service provider and is accessible through network interfaces, and some of Google's apps are typical examples. This is not the same as the enterprise-class application hosting services that companies such as Oracle and SAP have been offering for years, and this application is dedicated to their customers. SaaS is a new software delivery pattern, but it is not a cloud because the application is built by a service provider rather than by a client user.

Corporate cloud is what some people call their company's computing grid. But since it is a grid, why do you call it a cloud and confuse it? Managed backup services, the online storage that many companies provide, are mostly for individuals or small business users. This is not a new concept, nor is it a cloud. Storage is a service, a concept that comes with the failure of the storage network in the enterprise-level market. It puts data on the network and then accesses it through a predetermined application, which seems to add unnecessary complexity. Amazon's S3 can be said to be such a service, however, it only puts the application on the service layer and the execution process uses S3. It can be said that most of S3 customers are also using EC2 to calculate. So, S3 plus EC2 can be called cloud computing.

WEB 2.0 is a big idea, and many people like to put everything inside. For most people, Web 2.0 is a network service that supports interaction and collaboration over the Internet. Facebook, MySpace, photo sharing, instant messaging and even e-mail are all part of it. Perhaps the end of Web 2.0 and cloud computing will come together, but that requires a new, cloud-based social network application type, at least for now.

I think one of the reasons for this confusion is that these concepts require both common infrastructure technology and scalable computing and storage. This allows some infrastructure vendors to apply the popular term cloud computing, which may not be obvious to them, but the difference between providers and users, and cloud computing, is everywhere. The new concept of cloud computing requires a certain amount of room for development, but everything needs to be decided by the user rather than by the vendor who supports it.