Will cloud computing make desktop PCs obsolete?

[corkyg]

And another shoe hit the floor. Leave it to Apple to lead the way.

http://www.appleinsider.com/article...oud_to_drive_sales_of_apples_ios_devices.html

 

[Jeff7181]

All these cloud computing crap is for those people with no IT background. Anyone been in the business for a while should have heard of the term "ASP" or Application Service Provider. It was a big thing back in the early 2000s, now there are only handful of companies survived the hype from that time (Saleforce.com for example).

All these cloud computing crap is just ASP in another fancy lingo. It is doing better this time around because business are trying to outsource everything they can, and this cloud computing is just another avenue to outsource applications. So it becomes this must know lingo for all the business exec.

For personal usage, I would not rely on things like Google Doc, drop box as the main tool. They are just my backup solution at best. They definitely have some benefit, but nope they will not make desk top pc obsolete. I mean Steam is kinda cloud, but you still need to have a powerful pc to play the game even though the game is from steam. (actually the gb worth of file are still installed on your local drive, steam just make it easy for you to download again if you reinstall pc)

You're forgetting another factor. Microsoft has Azure servers spread all over the globe. If you're based out of Texas and have a customer in China, the latency and packet loss is going to make real-time/near real-time web applications unusable if every request has to come from China all the way back to your DC in Texas.

You're also confusing the lingo slightly. I don't have to use Microsoft, Google or Amazon services to make use of cloud computing. If I can afford to put data centers all over the world, that's my own cloud.

I think my point is that there are real benefits to using a cloud based solution, whether it's a private cloud or hosted cloud, and it doesn't mean your IT staff is ignorant, lazy or otherwise incapable of doing the work themselves.

 

[Griffinhart]

And another shoe hit the floor. Leave it to Apple to lead the way.

http://www.appleinsider.com/article...oud_to_drive_sales_of_apples_ios_devices.html

I have to ask. How is apple "leading the way" here? The vast majority on this stuff has been available already. Chrome OS. Google Docks, Office 360, MS - Live Sync. Apple is, actually quite late to the party with cloud computing. Taking idea's from products already in use elsewhere and slapping under the iCloud name isn't leading anything.

It seems that Apple mearly needs to hold a press conference announcing the coming if the latest iAnything and someone become the leader in such things.

 

[Griffinhart]

You're also confusing the lingo slightly. I don't have to use Microsoft, Google or Amazon services to make use of cloud computing. If I can afford to put data centers all over the world, that's my own cloud.

This is a very good point. Cloud computing is simply the ability to store, access, modify data and applications Via the internet. That function can come from your own local servers, or from a 3rd party providers like Apple, Google, or MS. As long as that data is accessible and workable from other machines from the internet (through a browser, typically), it's cloud computing. "The Cloud" usually refers to the internet, so Cloud computing is typically using web apps to access data stored on the internet.

I have a feeling there is going to be a lot of confusion of what cloud computing is and isn't in the near future.

 

[JackMDS]

Why do we have Tylenol Aleve, Advil, Aspirin, and so On.

One is Not replacing the other, each one has a segment of the population that "benefit", "like", one rather than the other.

Most End Users do not really use the PC the way Enthusiasts do.

For many of them a 16GB 3G Tablet with a little space in the Cloud is all they need to be happy.:awe:

On the other end Enthusiasts tend to be very self centered and think that the world (or at least the world of computing) revolves around them. 😱



😎

 

[Jeff7181]

I have to ask. How is apple "leading the way" here? The vast majority on this stuff has been available already. Chrome OS. Google Docks, Office 360, MS - Live Sync. Apple is, actually quite late to the party with cloud computing. Taking idea's from products already in use elsewhere and slapping under the iCloud name isn't leading anything.

It seems that Apple mearly needs to hold a press conference announcing the coming if the latest iAnything and someone become the leader in such things.

There's always a caveat... they were the first to do something in such and such way... or the first to successfully do something on such a large scale... etc.

 

[rchiu]

You're forgetting another factor. Microsoft has Azure servers spread all over the globe. If you're based out of Texas and have a customer in China, the latency and packet loss is going to make real-time/near real-time web applications unusable if every request has to come from China all the way back to your DC in Texas.

You're also confusing the lingo slightly. I don't have to use Microsoft, Google or Amazon services to make use of cloud computing. If I can afford to put data centers all over the world, that's my own cloud.

I think my point is that there are real benefits to using a cloud based solution, whether it's a private cloud or hosted cloud, and it doesn't mean your IT staff is ignorant, lazy or otherwise incapable of doing the work themselves.

I don't think I am the one confusing the lingo. If you own data center all over the world, you'd know where your servers are, which ip address it is on, still have to deal with the cost of maintenance, upgrade, support. The whole concept of cloud is your app and data is in some fluffy blur cloud without knowing exactly where the data is, and without the cost and trouble to maintain, upgrade...etc.

Sure I don't deny there are benefits to using cloud based solution. What I have problem with is many people, like the OP with this "making PC obsolete" hype. For private use, it's not a bad solution for sharing stuff. But unless you use PC lightly, you would need many serious processor/data intensive app (games for example), with the heavily lifting still done on the PC. The problem gets worse if the app is data intensive and your internet bandwidth is unstable or limited. There is just no way cloud is the be all end all solution for everyone's computing need like many people hyped.

Same thing applies to IT industry. All these exec keep asking their stuff if they can use cloud and don't even understand what cloud is and the inherent problem. Like I mention, there were many ASP trying to sell "cloud" enterprise application to companies. But the limited bandwidth, lack of ability for customization, issue with data security, all made the solution impractical. But with the current outsourcing wave, and stupid execs who don't know what they are talking about, the "cloud" is making a come back.

 

[Jeff7181]

I guarantee Microsoft is aware of the location of their servers, what the IP address of all of them are, what the cost of maintenance, upgrades and support are. That doesn't change the fact that Azure is cloud computing.

Again, whether it's your company that's doing the hosting or a different company, it's still a cloud. Your data center staff may not look at the servers with all the blinky lights as a fluffy blur cloud, but your developers probably do. They don't care about the hardware in your private cloud any more than they care about the hardware in Microsoft's Azure cloud. To them, it's a resource pool. The only time they care about it is when there's not enough resources to run their software.

 

[corkyg]

"...I have to ask. How is apple "leading the way" here? The vast majority on this stuff has been available already. Chrome OS. Google Docks, Office 360, MS - Live Sync. Apple is, actually quite late to the party with cloud computing. Taking idea's from products already in use elsewhere and slapping under the iCloud name isn't leading anything...."

I don't know that any of those cited items can sync automatically so that all your devices can access and share their cloud.

 

[rchiu]

I guarantee Microsoft is aware of the location of their servers, what the IP address of all of them are, what the cost of maintenance, upgrades and support are. That doesn't change the fact that Azure is cloud computing.

Again, whether it's your company that's doing the hosting or a different company, it's still a cloud. Your data center staff may not look at the servers with all the blinky lights as a fluffy blur cloud, but your developers probably do. They don't care about the hardware in your private cloud any more than they care about the hardware in Microsoft's Azure cloud. To them, it's a resource pool. The only time they care about it is when there's not enough resources to run their software.

But then Microsoft doesn't offer Azure to themselves but to their customers doesn't it? Their client doesn't have to know where the servers are and worry about the maintenance...etc, correct? And isn't that their main selling point?

Go search for any "cloud" service provider and you'd see the same selling point.

 

[Jeff7181]

But then Microsoft doesn't offer Azure to themselves but to their customers doesn't it? Their client doesn't have to know where the servers are and worry about the maintenance...etc, correct? And isn't that their main selling point?

Go search for any "cloud" service provider and you'd see the same selling point.

Are you saying a cloud is a cloud if, and only if, all of a customers' employees are ignorant of the infrastructure?

Why do you think there is some fundamental difference between a Microsoft/Amazon/Google/Apple cloud and a private cloud? All of them create a level of abstraction. None of them allow everyone to ignore infrastructure. Whether a business creates its own cloud or purchases cloud services from another business just depends on what's cost effective.

Going back to the OP's original question, I think it's very short signed and naive to discount the possibility that sometime in the future, the device you use may run the majority of its applications remotely, leveraging huge computing resources that are shared among multiple users and oversubscribed just as Internet connections are today... with the mind that 100% of the users will not be using 100% of the service 100% of the time.

 

[rchiu]

Are you saying a cloud is a cloud if, and only if, all of a customers' employees are ignorant of the infrastructure?

Why do you think there is some fundamental difference between a Microsoft/Amazon/Google/Apple cloud and a private cloud? All of them create a level of abstraction. None of them allow everyone to ignore infrastructure. Whether a business creates its own cloud or purchases cloud services from another business just depends on what's cost effective.

Going back to the OP's original question, I think it's very short signed and naive to discount the possibility that sometime in the future, the device you use may run the majority of its applications remotely, leveraging huge computing resources that are shared among multiple users and oversubscribed just as Internet connections are today... with the mind that 100% of the users will not be using 100% of the service 100% of the time.

Well, doesn't really matter what I think or said, I am just going by the industry definition. And if you talk to any company that's looking at cloud, I will bet you 99.99999% are not thinking or talking about their own cloud. Anyway, another problem with over hyped lingo is that everyone has their own definition, and that's why it becomes the be all end all solution.

We can argue all we want, neither of us can predict the future. But I think you are overly optimistic. Today 30%+ American still don't have access to Internet. Those with access, only 1/3 is using broadband and even less have always on, 3g or other wireless connection that is a pre-requisite to your cloud computing dream. Even if the connection situation improves, there are going to be huge concern about privacy, ownership of the app/data.

 

[Jeff7181]

I don't think I'm overly optimistic. It's not as far out there as flying cars or something like that.

You're right though, connectivity has a long way to go. That's a huge hurdle that needs to be overcome for something like this to take off at the consumer level. At the business level, it's being done now and it works extremely well when properly implemented.

 

[yinan]

VDI, which is essentially what we are talking about, takes a lot of work to maintain. It is not ready to replace everyones computer at home yet. When connectivity and the tech gets better maybe, but right now you need big pipes for it work work effectively.

 

[spikespiegal]

Hehe...

The only reason VDI exists is because IT departments *are* too lazy and stupid to manage application virtualization (Terminal Services, Citrix, etc). VMware is of course a lot sexier to manage and frankly a lot easier in terms of brain cells since you can just deploy an isolated OS for each application node. With VDI comes a need for switch upgrades, multiple SANs, and other cool stuff that corporations are footing the bill for and really don't need.

VDI demands huge back end resources and a pretty robust pipe. I'm dealing with a school district right now that invested well in excess of six digits on VDI only to find out they need to invest a lot more to get the same performance of an 8yr old workstation. Meanwhile, they're laying off teachers while their IT department is growing and we're buying more blades.

I could *easily* run 90% of the ditrict's applications on existing PCs (even PIIs) and a medium sized cluster of Terminal Servers. Performance would be superior by orders of magnitude, and client nodes would scream on 10meg hubs. The remaining 10% of those applications that don't like a TS environment can be delegated to standalone PCs. Exchange can go in the cloud (Microsoft) where it belongs and have somebody else manage it.

The REAL reason cloud based (or application hosting) hasn't taken over is basically because of the crappy state of broadband infrastructure. Most corporations have to contend with a T-1, or multiples of T-1s, and that's not a practical pipe for doing truly interactive OS virtualization on a large scale. Trust me though, there isn't a CIO who isn't looking at this, and frankly I agree with them given all the waste I've seen over the years. Not everybody wants an IT department.

 

[yinan]

You do not know what you are talking about. VDI does serve a purpose and it is a better solution that a Terminal Server environment. In a TS environment if you have to update an app you have to kick everyone off and then update it. XenDesktop you update the master, and then upon next reboot of the desktop all of your clients are update. This is non disruptive to the customer. Another way money is returned is with OS upgrades. You no longer have to visit every single desk to upgrade a customer, you do it from a central location and you are done. VDI is also more secure than traditional computing because you can lock it down so no data ever leaves the datacenter. For example, if you have a laptop on a Top Secret network a user can copy data to it leave the building and sell that data to terrorists. In a VDI environment, the user never has the option of saving data to thin thin client.

VDI does need a big internal pipe, that is true. Six digits is a very low cost, the ROI does not come with the initial hardware purchase it comes from the ease of maintenance. I am doing a 20,000 seat deployment so my numbers are an order of magnitude higher than yours. You also made a bad decision to go with blades. Blades suck and are very limited in the IO department, and they are harder to manage than bigger standalone servers. You should have gone with as big of a box as you could get, because that will allow you to use virtualization more efficiently.

10 megs hubs, sure. Running everyone off of a Terminal Server is difficult because you have no idea how applications are going to interact with each other, and how do you restrict people from using apps that they are not supposed to? This IS where app virtualization comes in, with APP-V or Thinapp. Exchange NEVER belongs in an external cloud, because then you are trusting someone else with your data which you should NEVER do if you care about it. What would stop your cloud provider from shutting down and/or deleting all of your stuff? Nothing.

You do not do VDI over WAN links you do it over internal links which are very cheap. So I have no idea where you are getting broadband from.

Maybe before you say something you should know what you are talking about first.

 

[Arkaign]

"...I have to ask. How is apple "leading the way" here? The vast majority on this stuff has been available already. Chrome OS. Google Docks, Office 360, MS - Live Sync. Apple is, actually quite late to the party with cloud computing. Taking idea's from products already in use elsewhere and slapping under the iCloud name isn't leading anything...."

I don't know that any of those cited items can sync automatically so that all your devices can access and share their cloud.

That's the way google docs works for me. Hell, it seems it saves/updates several times a minute, and it shows the changes live on my Android and for other users of the shared documents I use. Granted, I prefer using Microsoft Office for some things, but Google docs works quite well.

 

[Munky]

They basically want me to move back to the dumb terminal + central workstation model? No thanks. There's no replacement for physically owning and possessing your data and software. I'll consider it as a supplement to my usage, but no more.

If I had a dollar for every time someone claimed this and that technology is going to make what we know obsolete, I'd be swimming in cash.

 

[Cogman]

They basically want me to move back to the dumb terminal + central workstation model? No thanks. There's no replacement for physically owning and possessing your data and software. I'll consider it as a supplement to my usage, but no more.

If I had a dollar for every time someone claimed this and that technology is going to make what we know obsolete, I'd be swimming in cash.

There are legitimate uses for cloud services. For example, what if your servers you own become swamped? Wouldn't it be nice if you could rent some compute time from someone else to keep things snappy? Or maybe you can't justify the cost of buying new servers for 24/7 operation when you only need it for peek hours.

 

[Munky]

There are legitimate uses for cloud services. For example, what if your servers you own become swamped? Wouldn't it be nice if you could rent some compute time from someone else to keep things snappy? Or maybe you can't justify the cost of buying new servers for 24/7 operation when you only need it for peek hours.

Of course, I'm not discounting cloud services completely. But I find their claim that cloud services will replace my local data and application is just absurd.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Once was a time when I could feel confident in visualizing the future. Spoke to an old professor I worked for during college in the late '60s. He told me that I had predicted that Nixon would go to China -- that ONLY Nixon could go to China. Then there was the hiking trip that ended with three people sitting around the campfire on September 10, 2001. It was like . . . the three witches in "MacBeth." We didn't just predict the next day; we predicted the next decade.

But this? And now? Cell-phones. Cell-phone apps. I-pad. Kindle. About 50 more different brands of EE-lec-tronic Sechsual devices. "Beam me up, Scotty!"

If I were to travel a lot, I'd buy a laptop. My cell-phone provider wants to sell me "4G." The phone allows me to take photos and "text" in a new language requiring "U Lurn smthg nu so u can leev notes to people." I met a carpentry contractor working in our neighborhood all goo-gah to show me his I-Pad. He could get architectural drawings wirelessly, check e-mail, surf the web. But you can't type on the damn thing without looking for the keys, when you need something tactile to work with.

What Steve Jobs was saying a couple weeks ago at a conference about the cloud was this: "We're going to relegate the PC to being 'just another device.'" That means also that laptops are "just another device," cell-phones are "just another device," I-pods and I-pads are just "other devices," too.

And that's only because people want their mobile computing. They want their wireless connectivity which allows them to be mobile.

But talk all you want about storing your movies, photos, Anthony-Weiner-underpants, Casey-Anthony chloroform searches in "the cloud." NO WAY I'm going to put my tax-records in the cloud, my unpublished Great American Novel manuscript, my bank-account data -- even if I do "on-line banking."

I'd also just as soon keep my A-to-Z I-tunes files stored locally. You realize -- you can store enough music in HD-audio on a DVD or Blu-RAy to play for an entire week or two, before starting over?

When I was a kid in the '50s, my dad and mom had a record-player. They had about ten or fifteen records, including the Bing Crosby Christmas Album. Oh! We also had a radio. On Sunday night, we'd gather around to listen to "Fibber McGee and Molly," followed by the historical dramatizations of "You . . . Are. . . . There!"

Does anybody watch TV "together" anymore? Armed to the teeth with cell-phones and I-pads? Maybe it's just a different form of "communi-titty."

My PC is a general-purpose device. I pull in broadcast HD and our cable subscription, stream it all over the house. I pay my bills; file my taxes; order stuff for delivery next day without leaving the house; scan the patios and entry ways with carefully placed security cameras; control household lighting; play some games; watch TV.

So . . . sure . . . . it's "just another device."

 

[wirednuts]

i just think were at a point where cell phones and desktops are fast enough for most anything we need, and cheap enough too. sure, we could do it all over internet cloud computing, but why push all that data around the world when you can just get it done internally?

cloud computing is great for a lot of things though. it will be a vital supplement to the devices we have now, but it will never replace localized computing.