Well, you talk about security and automation and deployment but I’m not seeing a specific industry meaning…unless the specific industry meaning is “stop talking about it being on other peoples computers”.
Lets just assume for the moment…and I know this is crazy talk…lets assume that I’m not an expert on Cloud Computing™.
Cory’s point was that because anything sat in the Cloud™ is actually on a computer that is not yours and therefore you can’t control what happens to that (charging for previously free services in this instance). I don’t see how being abler to maintain distributed multi-tenant infrastructure, or using virtualization to enforce segmentation between tenants, contradicts Cory’s point.
We’ve always had some amount of “someone else’s computer”. The industry definition is that Cloud Computing is about a platform, not about someone else’s computers or data centers. That platform back in the early days wasn’t as automated, but still was a platform where you paid someone else to deal with the nitty gritty of running a datacenter.
I was at a conference last year when a PHB type mentioned that she was not comfortable with “The Cloud” because the data is just “Out there”. Many folks in the room chuckled. That’s what I’m talking about.
So, Cory’s usage of the term doesn’t mean, “stored in a cloud provider” it just means, “someone else’s data center”. And to be fair, we don’t know for a fact that the data isn’t stored on a server under some Dev’s desk, or in a disused closet somewhere. Cloud indeed. I literally have seen software distribution systems where it really was just on a box under a guy’s desk.
I’m setting up a web application, and I’m done testing the fiddly bits on local servers. Time to scale up!
Normally, I find a datacenter, order some parts, build everything out, send someone out to oversee setup, and in a few weeks/months I have one site set up.
With a cloud solution, I can get similar functionality and deploy to 1 “datacenter” (in AWS, these are called “zones”) in a matter of minutes. Once that’s done, I can deploy into multiple zones (“near-ish” datacenters) for better availability and disaster recovery. If I’ve set things up right, this is basically just uploading a file and clicking “go” (ok, it can be more or less complicated than that… continuous deployment alone will keep us all arguing for months).
From there, I can probably spend a few weeks of development time to figure out how to drop my application in different parts of the world (in AWS, these are called “Regions”) to solve latency and data sovereignty issues.
I’m basically proposing that we could release our new app globally in a matter of months, while only dealing with one or two vendors. I don’t have to watch drive health, power needs, etc.
Back at our private Datacenter, I have to have a staff dedicated to negotiating with datacenters across the globe. I have to carefully consider updates and changes before sending (or contracting) real people to go out and do the work in-person. I have to monitor the hardware and replace it. The list goes on.
But Cloud is also what Canary are calling it, and we don’t know what they mean by it either. In this case, Cory’s use of Cloud is to remind you that Cloud doesn’t mean floating safely in the aether but rather in someone else’s control.
And where data is physically located can be important depending on the type of data and whether it’s crossing national boundaries.
This shit drives me nuts. I’ve caved for a few relatively cheap things (YI home “security” cameras) 50 bucks I point them at the bird’s aviary. or feral cat traps in the yard. I hate that they go through their servers and that I have to use their phone app to view the video. I want some security cameras but I don’t want the video going through a 3rd party system. Is it really that hard/complicated to create a system where the server is on your home network? I guess maybe the subscription revenue just isn’t there.
Sure… but my security camera doesn’t need AWS it doesn’t need to be accessible to millions of people all across the globe. Google’s proven the AI features necessary to do the “heavy lifting” can and will fit on an small embedded system. The only thing needed is a small server for the end user to access (you know like the one on your router that hosts the web page you use to fiddle with the settings and a vpn to access the video streams (you know like the one baked into most routers). There’s no need for the video to be hosted/viewed externally except for greed.
You are the only person using The Cloud™ in the technical sense of a platform.
Everyone else is using it in the non-technical sense of Someone Elses’s Computer™ and is Wrong™.
I think we’re done here, thanks for playing and tune in next week for another exciting episode of “Someone is Wrong on the Internet!”
Perhaps your sarcasm detector needs adjustment is the problem. I can recommend a good company that does it as a service. They are hosted in The Cloud™.
I would say “not exactly”. The “cloud based” label isn’t for the people who buy and use their products other than a marketing buzzword. It’s an advertisement to their investors, who are their actual customers in this late stage capitalist system we have.
That could be it. My sarcasm detector is calibrated in English Metric* (not to be confused with European Metric**). It’s possible you’re delivering your sarcasm in American Imperial*** (not to be confused with English Imperial****).
* It’s the normal metric system† that we’ll use perfectly happily unless we’ve fallen out with Europe, in which case it’s a terrible imposition and we ought to go back to using English Imperial††, we ran an empire using it, you know! Bloody Europe!
**Like English Metric only using all of it because it’s easier, and not whingeing
***Like English Imperial only different, because they’re inability to spell properly is only matched by their inability to count properly (i.e. English Imperial)
****a complicated system of measurement involving lots of fractions, multiplication and different bases. Clearly superior to the easy to use metric system.
†Except for a few bits of English Imperial we’ve kept so we feel special
††please god, don’t make us do that, we’ll have to learn maths again!
I think that the most worrisome development here is the raise of an asymmetry in contracts:
Canary can just change their end of the contract at will, not delivering what they promised with the camera
the user still has to hold their end of the contract, pay the camera and respect the DMCA terms.
And Canary is not an isolated case. Now the fact that part of the ecomic actors can simply disregard their end of the contracts while the others are still bound by it is an essential societal change. You call it « late-stage capitalism », but it is not actually capitalism any more.
