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On Thu, 11 Oct 2012, Simon Avery wrote:
Thin clients seem rather redundant when we consider "cloud computing" & the Web.Isn't the whole point of "cloud computing" that you have a "thin client" ?Kind of, but it's one of those terms that is so often abused it can mean everything - including running apps locally and keeping data remotely. It is a marketing term, after all.
It's all relative... I hate the term personally - my interpretation might extend to actually running apps remotely (displaying locally) which is more like the LTSP type of thing - however personally, I left that behind 20 years ago...
Personally I have two significant issues with cloud computing.1. My data is owned and controlled by somebody else. As has already happened, a cloud provider went bust, businesses relying on them lost access to their data. Add to that the risk of confidentiality being exposed and you have a fairly dangerous situation as far as control and access goes.
Your data ought to be owned by you - even if it is controlled by someone else. If your chosen remote hosting service claims ownership of it, then dump them.
2. I live in devon. I manage data and IT for five distinct sites. Only one is within a town. Four have internet connections that are way below the national average, ranging between 1.0mbit down and 256 up, and 3.5/0.768. On that I struggle to serve basic web access to my users (using two outbounds at the busiest site). Modern adsl is actually quite reliable nowadays - far better than the isdn we had before - but it's far too slow to be putting our data out there. I host our own email too, which is great for keeping control, but does mean an admin and hardware overhead. But that said, I'm fairly sure I'd still like to keep control of it in my own hands even if we had the bandwidth to host it "out there somewhere".
I live in Devon too - however my attitude towards clients who want to keep data "in the cloud" or tell me that the Internet is essential for their business is to tell them to get a leased line in. (and these days, they're not my clients if they don't)
Seriouly. Fuckem. If they need Internet then get Internet - and don't fuck about with pissy little consumer grade "broadband". Anyone, anywhere can get a leased line. They just need to pay for it, and if a company of 10+ people can't afford a 10Mb leased line then they're not taking their business seriously. My latest clients just gotten 100Mb symetric with no contention to the edge of the ISPs network.
I even consider 10Mb symetric with a 2ms ping time to the edge of the ISP to be far more usable than 10x that off a consumer grade "broadband" provider. It's chalk and cheese.
The last 10Mb line I had instlled for a client cost them nothing for install (virgin media fibre) and £450 a month from the ISP (not Virgin, obiously) that is on a 100Mb bearer too, so they can go up to 100Mb at the flick of a button when they need it. They also get a small IPv4 subnet and a big IPv6 subnet, of-course.
There's no doubt cloudiness has its place, but anyone responsible for data should think very carefully before handing it over to someone else.
Just follow googles guidelines - keep 3 copies. One locally, one "in the cloud" and one in another cloud, or on tape, etc.
I actually run my own "cloud" for my clients - if they want it - which for me is 2 dozen servers in a data centre I trust. I still like most of my clients to have a on-site server though - which works for my clients who have offices with 10+ staff as they then have a leased line.
So running your own server in a data centre works - as long as your clients are prepared to pay for it, but people seem to want cheap these days, or think they're entitled to "superfast" broadband without actualy paying for it, or undestanding the implications of contention, etc.
Gordon
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