Way back in my first Appistry blog post, "Cross-pollination, Beehives, the Game of Life, and You," I wrote about synthesis. I always find it fascinating how ideas morph, migrate across disciplines, and concepts either over time, or in a single, "eureka" instant. Cloud computing is an excellent example. Cloud computing is the new "next"   thing coming tomorrow. However, much of the technology behind the cloud is mature and ready today.

I was catching up on discussion threads over in the cloud-computing Google group  (an almost impossible task, it's a very active group). Reuven Cohen posted a thread titled "Cloudbursting." Cloudburst is a great term that several have applied to the problem of spikes in demand on systems. Cloudbursting is just one of many SLAs that cloud computing looks to solve.

Now, cloudbursting is a great topic, but what really caught my attention was a fork in Reuven's thread that began with this statement by Bill Barr:

"I’m feeling really old … these problems were solved and solutions built, last century. Most of these products and tools have pretty much been sitting on the shelf for over a decade, waiting for the industry to catch up."

The discussion that followed elicited a number of comments about the state of cloud computing technologies, and reflecting on the fact that some key cloud computing technologies have been around for years, but had not really taken off until the cloud synthesis occurred. Several posts from folks from different companies echoed the same sentiment, but this pithy comment from Reuven captures the point nicely:

"The answer is they [technologies on the leading edge] were too early. I first came up with elastic computing 5 years ago, nobody cared. Now the phone rings off the hook. What's changed?"

Of course what has changed is that the synthesis of ideas behind cloud computing is communicating the importance of practices and technologies for all the players. Many of us involved in defining what cloud computing is or isn't, recognize that a number of technologies and disciplines are coming together. There is no "one-stop" shop yet for implementing a complete cloud computing architecture, either on the public cloud or in private clouds. However, many of the technologies needed have indeed been around for a few years, and have been touting their message for some time, a message that now resonates with the synthesis that is cloud computing.

Savvy shops don't have to wait until "tomorrow" for cloud computing technologies to mature. Many of the underlying technologies are here, and ready, today. 

We founded Tsunami Research (the company that  Appistry) seven years ago today on September 10, 2001. The second day of our company was 9/11, a fact that solemnly influenced a lot of our design decisions and thoughts. Appistry EAF was designed from the beginning to address the issues that are the bread and butter of cloud computing discussions:

• Commodity-computing
• Distributed architectures
• Application virtualization
• Virtualized management
• Automated software deployment and versioning
• Reliability and Availability
• Scaling out horizontally and linearly
• Scaling up to maximize use of CPU cores
• Self-organizing and self-healing design that expects problems and deals with it

To name just a few....

So, cloud computing may be the new, next big thing of tomorrow, but go give it a spin today.