Cloud Computing

recylingbin

skinny90 wrote: »

Hp galway have Also invested massively in cloud,regarding Ireland you'll be very surprised what's in store for us,infact a lot of infrastructure is going to be developed in the west part of the country because wait til u get this...The weather is ideal

I heard rocky fields are optimum for building mainframes.

Cloud computing will be de rigeur in 10 years time in much the same way as apple are ubiquotous for morons.

Potatoeman

Adyx wrote: »

Not necessarily true. Microsoft have a very large datacentre in Dublin which they announced they would be expanding to 415,000 sq ft only a couple of months ago.

That would be a for national data storage not international as you don't want to store your data farther than necessary. It would mean the local data storage in certain businesses would be unnecessary leading to job cuts.
Out souring services like this can lead to a lower standards of service as you have less support per head and turn around time for technical issues is longer.
I worked for one company that outsourced some of its application servers in one leg of the business and the support standard dropped as you are dealing with helpdesks that have very little knowledge of what the business actually does and how some of its applications work. Turn around time for issues went from one to four hours to one to two days. If you factor in that the employees are highly paid fund accounts the time they lose due to technical problems worked out more expensive than they saved. The director that outsourced these services to save money had already left when they figured this out.

Adyx

Potatoeman wrote: »

That would be a for national data storage not international as you don't want to store your data farther than necessary. It would mean the local data storage in certain businesses would be unnecessary leading to job cuts.
Out souring services like this can lead to a lower standards of service as you have less support per head and turn around time for technical issues is longer.
I worked for one company that outsourced some of its application servers in one leg of the business and the support standard dropped as you are dealing with helpdesks that have very little knowledge of what the business actually does and how some of its applications work. Turn around time for issues went from one to four hours to one to two days. If you factor in that the employees are highly paid fund accounts the time they lose due to technical problems worked out more expensive than they saved. The director that outsourced these services to save money had already left when they figured this out.

No it's not just national. Irish Times article

Irish Times wrote:

The centre currently provides computing capacity to customers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It was the first Microsoft mega data centre built outside of the US, and was designed to support the company's cloud services.

Google and Amazon also have datacentres in Dublin apparently.

I'm not debating the pros and cons of cloud services though. It has its uses, but I like my applications and data local, where I can control it.

philologos

Adyx wrote: »

Not necessarily true. Microsoft have a very large datacentre in Dublin which they announced they would be expanding to 415,000 sq ft only a couple of months ago.

Amazon's EU data centre for cloud computing is in Dublin. I think Microsoft's may be here also. What I do know is they definitely have to have one in Europe due to EU Data Protection laws. If a business wants an application up on Windows Azure the data from the EU can't leave the EU.

AeoNGriM

Paparazzo wrote: »

It's a new buzzword for something that's been happening for years. A load of bollocks. You'll hear your manager in work mention the word "cloud" in meetings in an attempt to sound like they're working with new technologies.

Nah, it's not.

At work, we use a cloud based e-mail service to handle office emails. It's hosted by Microsoft, probably in a secret underground lab somnewhere. We use a simple client on everyones machine to handle email and calendaring, and that has allowed us to retire all of our Exchange servers and free up rack space for other sh!t. Like porn storage and the like.

It's easier to maintain (by virtue of it having no maintenance) and you can always blame someone else when sh!t fcuks up.

timmywex

Cloud computing is massive!

The Corinthian

The 'Cloud' is really only a marketing term. In reality 'cloud' computing has been around for a while if you consider that it is really just software as a service (SaaS) and/or a infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Simple examples that have been around for over ten years (long before the 'cloud') are Hotmail and Rackspace, respectively - indeed, the latter I believe is one of the biggest 'cloud' players out there.

Looking at Rackspace ten years ago, if you wanted to rent out a server, they used to have a nice Web interface that allowed you to pick how many units, bandwidth, CPU, OS, and so on. You pressed a button and the whole thing was set up for you as you chose and paid a monthly rental based upon these specs.

What has happened in the last decade is that they, and others like Amazon, saw a market for more flexible offerings that allow you pay only for what you use (but naturally you end up paying more in the long term for this flexibility).

For me, the 'cloud' is simply a nice marketing term for the direction the Web has been going in for a long time - in reality it's not really that complicated. The idea and what it can provide is potentially excellent to many businesses (not all I stress), but it's actually not a new idea - at least not the basic idea behind it.

That there is so much confusion, and so many confusing terms and acronyms associated with it is more a demonstration of the marketing mystique that has been built around it.

Sykk

Stiffler2 wrote: »

Shuppose I'll explain myself here.

What's the difference between normal hosting & "the Cloud"

You don't own the hardware or maintain it, that's about it.
BUT - you now also don't own your data - big security risk

granted - a few savings in cost of maintenance of a server but does that outweight the potential of having your data robbed, I would think not.

The reason people in IT don't like the cloud.
They tuk r dobs

Bolded for stupidity. :pac:

funk-you

Potatoeman wrote: »

It will cost local IT jobs if businesses keep their data in outsourced sites and Ireland is an unlikely hub for foreign countries to store data.

As a datacentre infrastructure engineer who has worked in most of the DC's in the country and across the UK and Europe. Bollocks.

-Funk

Sykk

Potatoeman wrote: »

It will cost local IT jobs if businesses keep their data in outsourced sites and Ireland is an unlikely hub for foreign countries to store data.

Ehmmm.. Amazon, the worlds largest supplier of cloud infrastructure and customers have a European datacentre located in Kilmainham...

Please stop talking :P You're making my eyes bleed!

Capt'n Midnight

Potatoeman wrote: »

It will cost local IT jobs if businesses keep their data in outsourced sites and Ireland is an unlikely hub for foreign countries to store data.

Remember Worldport ?

http://www.independent.ie/business/worldport-closes-dublin-office-with-the-loss-of-87-jobs-321987.html

WORLDPORT, the US technology company, has closed its $100m Dublin-based European headquarters with the loss of 87 jobs, the Irish Independent has learned.

Staff were told last night the company was closing the Dubin web-hosting facility as it has failed to generate sufficient business from Irish companies, it is understood.

The 125,000 sq ft facility in Blanchardstown, Co Dublin, was the largest web hosting facility in Ireland

That was back in 2001 when Eircom's business model was to per-minute dial up internet. Just because the home users and SME's didn't have BB worth talking about didn't mean we haven't had world class connections to the rest of the world. or yonks. Do you have any idea how much transatlantic bandwidth lands here ?

Our assets include our tax laws, mild climate - webfarm air con probably causes as much CO2 as air travel - , EU data protection laws , not being in the UK or US. Before privatisation we used to have some of the cheapest electricity in Europe. We don't have a history of industrial relations problems.

Of course we don't tick all the boxes or everyone, but for some customers we do

The Corinthian

Stiffler2 wrote: »

What's the difference between normal hosting & "the Cloud"

You don't own the hardware or maintain it, that's about it.

Unless you have your hardware in-house, chances are neither do you. Almost all enterprise solutions since the late nineties are put in data farms, typically including an SLA on maintenance. You might 'own' the hardware and you might even 'maintain' the server software, but in many cases companies do not and certainly they do not maintain the network.

Meanwhile smaller operations, and quite a few larger ones, still use shared or virtual hosting, which means you have little or no control or maintenance responsibilities.

The only exception to this rule is if you decide to host in-house, which is fine as long as you have a robust enough connection and not too much load (an intranet/extranet set-up normally). The only time I've seen this done in the last five years, is where the company wanted 100% control on data security for insurance reasons (e.g. banks) or had an IT department who wanted to secure their own jobs by creating more work for themselves.

BUT - you now also don't own your data - big security risk

How do you not own the data? AFAIK, you have IPR on all such data in cloud-hosted solutions, just as you have on a virtual server. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

granted - a few savings in cost of maintenance of a server but does that outweight the potential of having your data robbed, I would think not.

I've seen more instances of data breaches from in-house hosted servers than I think I'll ever see from third party hosts. The reason is simple; the latter are specialized in this area, while in most businesses (certainly SME's) the IT guy is a jack-o-trades or developer with this as a secondary job who as often as not will 'forget' to patch the server on a regular basis.

The reason people in IT don't like the cloud.
They tuk r dobs

I think the only people who don't like cloud computing are those who don't seem to have a grasp of what it is (or from what I can see, most hosting concepts) and who are threatened at the potential outsourcing that could come with it.

Cloud computing is, as a concept, is not going to work for everyone and sometimes it's just not a good idea for your solution. There's way too much hype and too little understanding in something which really isn't all that complex when you come down to it. But it can commercially make sense in many instances; as long as you know what you're talking about, that it.