Cloud Computing

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Cloud Computing - What is That?
By Bob Browning


You may have heard a lot about Cloud Computing recently and maybe you are getting confused. You are in good company. I saw a video recently where dozens of experts were asked what it is. And there were dozens of different answers (including 'when I use my laptop on a plane'). You may even have seen Larry Ellison's rant on YouTube:

"The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop"

Lets lay down some definitions to clarify this confusion. Cloud Computing generally means that instead of running your application on your computer, you run it on someone else's computer and access it via a web browser. The term comes from the ubiquitous use of a cloud to represent the Internet on PowerPoint presentations. Instead of buying your application from a software house, you run it from the Internet and pay for it when you need it. Last year this approach was called Software as a Service (SaaS). However that was very 2008; these days you refer to Cloud Computing.

Cloud computing 1970's style

Running an application remotely over a network is of itself not a very new concept. In 1980 I produced a company budget using a teletype machine connected via a dial-up line to an ADP computer somewhere in the cloud that was the ADP network. I paid by the hour and all the budget runs cost about $3,000 in total. The following year I found I could save a lot of money and get a quicker result by running a brand new spreadsheet program called Visicalc on a $2,000 Apple II computer. Thus began the decline of cloud computing; 1970's style.

Cloud computing 2000's style

Roll forward a couple of decades and networks have got a great deal faster and cheaper. The economics are different, and cloud computing is looking a good alternative to supporting individual PC applications or even your own mainframe.

Can you search on Google, find an application and be up and running with your new billing system the same day? Possibly not. These are the people you might come across.

Force.com

Salesforce.com provides the market-leading contact management service. This is now called either sales force automation (SFA) or customer relationship management (CRM) depending on whether you are dealing with prospective or existing customers. The Salesforce software is provided on their own mainframes and is accessed via a browser. They charge per month per user.

In some industries, such as financial technology, Salesforce.com is ubiquitous. In fact they have such a high market penetration that to grow further they have to diversify. Their chosen route is to create a website (force.com) where other people can offer their applications to run on their platform. They call it the AppExchange.

There are over 800 applications listed, the vast majority of which seem to be add-ons to the Salesforce.com system. This is however obviously a very interesting concept and other non-salesforce applications are being added.

Netsuite

Netsuite is a complete CRM, SFA, Accounting, ERP (enterprise resource planning) and ecommerce system provided as software as a service. They don't call their main application Cloud Computing, instead they have a 'Cloud' offering which consists of other peoples add-ons - a bit like the AppExchange concept.

Google

Google have a suite of office applications that run 'in the cloud'. These could be very useful if you have a special need to share the documents with others.

Amazon

Amazon has a Cloud offering which in its raw state is a virtual private server (VPS). This is a login to a Unix or Windows computer that looks and feels as if you have the computer all to yourself. Physically you are sharing the computer with many others but this is all hidden from you.

There are many VPS services on offer from many suppliers. However the Amazon offering has a big difference. When you create a server you can specify that it is to be preloaded with software from a library. This is what transforms it into 'Cloud Computing' rather than just any old VPS. Because the library of functions is pre-tested and pre-installed the startup time and cost should be much reduced.

Hosting providers

If Amazon can market a VPS offering as Cloud Computing, then the door is opened for many others to do the same - but without the preloaded software bit. You might see this as 'Cloud Hosting' instead. Thus the definition of the term is migrating as we watch it.

About the author

Bob Browning has been working on web development projects since 1995. He heads a small team of web developers in London who work with designers on their web projects. If you need help with web technology please check our website: http://www.textor.com

If you are in the UK and are interested in Netsuite please give us a call as we have a very good UK based Netsuite partner we can recommend.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_Browning

Ubiquitous Computing

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Google Building the Ubiquitous Web
By Harry Alesso


Today, while Globalization is unfolding, only 18% of the world's population is connected to the Internet. What will happen as the rest of the world becomes connected?

By 2020, it may be possible for nearly every individual to have personally-tailored access to the whole of knowledge through 'perfect search' - where the ultimate search engine can understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want; anytime, anywhere.

In its quest for 'perfect search' Google could become the critical gatekeeper for connecting us to all of human knowledge; making it the leader of the Information Revolution and creating a Brave New Vision for Globalization.

The globalization of information technology began with Mark Weiser, who first identified the concept of ubiquitous computing (UC) in 1988 while he was working at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Weiser described UC as the 'third wave' in computing for achieving the full potential of computing and networking.

The first wave of computing was the era of IBM, where complex mainframe computers supported large numbers of people through centralized organizations. The second wave was the era of Microsoft, where individuals and personal computing machines shared the same desktop in decentralized computing.

Today searching the Web has become an essential starting point for information access. As a result, the third wave of computing is becoming the era of Google where the information environment of each person is connected through Google to many varied devices. The key enabling technologies include the Web, wireless networking, and countless small devices which extend our personal reach from the local to a global.

The process of information retrieval consists of searching within a document collection for a particular query. In 1989 document storage, access and retrieval was revolutionized by Tim Berners-Lee when he invented the World Wide Web. Unfortunately, like the infamous Tower of Babel, much of the data on the Web remained inaccessible until 1998 when link analysis for information retrieval began to be used.

The word "Google" didn't exist before Larry Page and Sergio Brin misspelled Googol while naming their new link analysis search engine which used their PageRank algorithm.

Today, the word Google defines a 200 billion dollar company with over 25,000 employees that connects people in over a hundred languages to relevant information for free. Called "googling" the search results of over a billion searches a day includes small targeted advertisements through its 'AdWords' system; a software system that offers a self-service advertisement development capability and yields tremendous financial success for Google.

Soon however, ubiquitous computing will empower the fourth wave in computing called the Ubiquitous Web, where connected devices are automatically controlled over the Web to run financial transactions, as well as, pumps, lights, switches, sensors, monitors, and all manner of industrial machines. Google's G-phone operating system which is scheduled for release in late 2008 is its first step toward dominating the fourth wave.

While Google Earth provides satellite views for nearly very location on Earth including weather patterns and information, Google's next level of capabilities such as G-Android and G-Phone can extend to monitoring and sharing environmental data. The development of the Ubiquitous Web in coming years will permit global sensing and monitoring of many environmental parameters, such as, greenhouse gases, temperatures, water levels, ice flows, animal populations, vegetation, rainforests, weather patterns and much more. Eventually, the Ubiquitous Web connecting to billions of devices worldwide will enable us to control many environmental devices such as heat, light, pumps, etc.

Reference

Alesso, H. P. and Smith, C. F., Connections: Patterns of Discovery John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Harry_Alesso

Smartphone

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Smartphone sensor could detect toxic chemicals
By Ben Coxworth

Our smartphones can already surf the Net, take photos and videos, play games, and even make phone calls, so why not... have them smell the air? That what America’s Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate would like to see happen. The Cell-All initiative would see cell phones equipped with a sensor capable of detecting deadly chemicals. In the event of a terrorist chemical attack, the device could conceivably save numerous lives.

The chemical-sniffing chip would cost less than a dollar, and would always be working in the background, much like an antivirus program on a computer. If it detected what it perceived as a toxic chemical within its immediate vicinity, it would alert the user and/or a central station, depending on the substance in question. Alerts sent to the station would include the time of day, the phone’s location, and the name of the chemical that has been detected. An individual alert might indicate a false positive, but if the station received many simultaneous alerts from the same area, then an evacuation could be in order.

Homeland Security is currently working on a proof-of-concept study, to see just how workable the concept would be. Teams from Qualcomm, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Rhevision Technology are participating in the program.

The Cell-All sensor would only be active in the phones of people who opted into the program, and alerts would be sent anonymously - conspiracy theorists, of course, might suspect otherwise.