With all this talk about Windows Azure, SQL Azure, Amazon services and moving to the cloud, I start thinking to myself this all sounds somewhat familiar. Not quite Déjà vu, but it feels a little like that.
Back in 1998, That ’70s Show went on the air. It made what was old seem new again. Or at least fun and interesting.
I can remember taking my first computer courses in high school. They taught us a bit of computer history. Showed pictures of the first computers that were huge, taking up an entire room. They got around to explaining these computers were expensive, and since they were expensive, people shared computing time.
That was starting to click with me again now.
It seems like we’re making these old concepts new again. And building on it. Rather than buying many servers in order to set up load balancing, minimize network latency, and scale out…these service providers are doing that part for you. That way all you have to do is lease your time and storage.
Marty! We gotta go back!
The way I see it, it’s good to look back. It’s my whole belief that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. If we look back, and find that something old can be re-used. Do it. Learn from it.
Unlike before, this time we have several server farms distributed across the planet. This gives us all the chance to share limited computing time and storage, but have great up time, great speed, and great capacity.
Also, rather than having to buy servers we all would own privately, we can share those resources, and as a result reduce the amount of energy needed, since we would have as much idle time (at least in theory). Is this a “Save the server farm, save the world”?
I doubt it, but it seems like a pretty good step forward. In this way it looks like cloud computing is affecting all of us… but how will cloud computing affect you?
Tell me how SQL Azure, or any form of cloud computing affects you. I’d like to know!