You Can’t Draw a Box Around a Cloud

The cloud. The cloud has been with us technical folks for a long time. Typically, the cloud is used to represent an aggregation of resources that are "out there" to be used. Of course, most famously, the cloud is used to represent the vast aggregation of resources that is the Internet. Some rudimentary web searching gave some results, though I can’t be sure that either of these are the earliest uses of a cloud symbol in modeling diagrams. Peter Chen used cloud symbols for entity-relationship modeling as far back as 1976, and Grady Booch used clouds in his pre-UML object-oriented design methodology. Booch’s clouds lost out to James Rumbaugh’s "box" symbols in the UML notation battle, and today we find that some folks are trying to draw boxes around clouds again. I’m talking, of course, about "the cloud" and "cloud computing," and those that declare that the resources of cloud computing must be Internet-based and Internet-accessible, or it’s not cloud computing. Or, to put it another way, a cloud behind a corporate firewall is not a cloud. I beg to differ.

To be honest, terms like "the cloud" and "cloud computing" are riding a veritable jet stream of activity and discussion, and so there’s lots of disagreement going around. One could easily spend an entire day in the blogosphere and in forums like cloud-computing@googlegroups.com, and entertain oneself with a dizzying range of conflicting definitions for what "cloud computing" is and isn’t. Personally, I like Michael’s definition that delineates between Grids, Clouds, and Fabrics (which just goes to show that we aren’t afraid to jump in on the definition fun  too). Likewise, Appistry is one of the sponsors of the first CloudCamp taking place this week. I’m sure we’ll be hearing about it from Sam. None of this, including disagreement, is unhealthy. Discussions like these are in part how synthesis happens and new ways of looking at problems become solutions. 

As solutions and definitions solidify however, the technologies and practices so defined continue to evolve. This is something that the folks saying that cloud computing must be Internet-based and Internet-accessible, need to remember. Consider the path that Internet technologies have taken in the past. Very early on, Internet technologies begat Intranet siblings. My first Gopher server back in the day (about 1992) was Gopher #630 server on the root Gopher directory. Primarily, this Gopher was for outside users to access, but it was likewise used in-house by the Duke Talent Identification  Program staff. My first introduction to HTTP-based software development was not for Internet use, but for Intranet applications for what was then Glaxo Pharmaceuticals. There are much broader examples, of course. Appistry’s Enterprise Application Fabric (EAF) product found some of its inspiration in the foundational principles of the Internet. Being a distributed computing application platform, that comment should perhaps be followed by a "duh." The point is that whether you called it Internet or Intranet or something else, the principles, technologies, and practices were and are the same. Overtime the Internet/Intranet distinctions fall away and the principles, technologies, and practices just are.

Drawing boxes around clouds seems to have worked for Rumbaugh when he, Booch, and Jacobson were working out the UML notation. However, drawing a box around "the cloud" and cloud computing and saying "there, that’s only a cloud if it’s on the Internet" is not going to hold. The underlying principles, technologies, and practices growing up around cloud  computing will be used for in-house technologies, for in-house clouds (Sam made the case for this in his post "Cloud computing behind the firewall"). Enterprise clouds will become aggregated resources accessible to different parts of an organization. Some in-house clouds will touch the Internet, and some won’t, but they’ll still be clouds based on cloud principles.

So, the cloud and it’s technologies will refuse to stay in the "Internet-only" box that some are drawing. In "Jurassic Park," Dr. Ian Malcolm is asked by Henry Wu if "you’re implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will… breed?" Malcolm replies "No, I’m simply saying that life, uh… finds a way." And, I think, the Internet Clouds and the Enterprise Clouds will be all the better for it.