Cloud Computing is many things. A quick check on Technorati this evening showed there were over 14,000 blogs picking this topic up in one way or another.

There are many facets to cloud computing and they cannot all be covered in one blog entry. Security alone is such a significant issue that I shall say no more about it here but look at some other points.

There are exciting applications of course. bMobile, http://www.bmobileroute.com/archives/83 for example, offers plenty of stuff for iPhone and other mobile devices. Songsmith from Microsoft is an innovative and human scale idea. http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/01/microsoft-songsmith-review.ars Also from Micrsoft is Office 2010, Office Web, described as software as a service (SAAS) to distinguish itself from those common cloud computing providers such as Google. http://www2.webmasterradio.fm/blog/microsoft-office-rises-into-the-clouds/

Naturally Google is taking the fight onto its competitor’s territory with Chrome. That should be enhancing the Cloud with a downloadable operating system in 2010. And there are views on this such as http://www.taranfx.com/blog/?p=1369

With so much going on it is unsurprising that the matter of standards is raisng its ugly head. One of the bodies taking a shot at this is the Object Management Group http://www.omg.org/ which, at its recent Cloud Standards Summit, announced a collaboration with leading technology Standards Development Organizations to coordinate and communicate standards for Cloud computing and storage.

And there are forums, seminars and conferences such as the Open Source Cloud Computing Forum where such assertions as It is generally agreed that open source software is already taking a leadership role in the world of cloud computing can be made. http://press.redhat.com/2009/07/13/open-source-cloud-computing-forum-agenda-posted/

If a conference is called, can market research studies be far behind? (Or is it the other way round?) Well in addition to specialist analysts like TekPlus (see our home page) the big firms such as Gartner and Frost & Sullivan have contributed their six-figure studies.

The technical offerings are principally software applications but there are tools where Vmware is a natural player and highly spoken of by some. http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/07/13/vsphere-suite/ Even hardware components are launched on their reputed cloud computing capabilities. The newest Opteron processors are targeted at cloud computing and web serving environments, it is said. Does the fact that it may deliver up to 18 % better performance-per-watt compared to the quad-core version, make it inherently suitable for the cloud? Some think so http://www.pclaunches.com/processors/amd_opteron_he_sixcore_energy_efficient_processors_launched.php

Often there is a suspicion that things to do with cloud computing may be overstated. At http://www.abugidainfo.com/?p=10340 there is heart warming story that Amharic picked up from the ‘Seattle Times’.
Ethiopia is rolling out 250,000 laptops to its schoolteachers nationwide, all running on Microsoft’s cloud platform, called Azure. The laptops will allow teachers to download curriculum, keep track of academic records and securely transfer student data throughout the education system, without having to build a support system of hardware and software to connect them….“They’re going to be able to leapfrog ahead of most companies in the U.S.,” said Danny Kim, chief technology officer of FullArmor. This is a Boston company that just happens to be working on the deployment of the Ethiopian project.

There is even the suggestion that cloud computing is transitory. http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/ektron-cms400net-deployed-in-the-amazon-cloud-005025.php reports The cloud appears to be the new black in the fashion of web content management…vendors are conquering the cloud in hopes of dazzling their customers with more hosting options and improved scalability.

Out final comment comes firmly back to the ground at http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2009/07/minnesota-law-review-936-june-2009.html There is a link to the words of lawyer David A. Couillard who writes on ‘Defogging the Cloud: Applying Fourth Amendment Principles to Evolving Privacy Expectations in Cloud Computing’. It took nearly a century after the invention of the telephone for the Supreme Court to recognize that the Fourth Amendment could be applied to the content of private telephone conversations. Today…courts [are] reluctant to grant Fourth Amendment protection to data [on the Internet]… “Cloud computing” …is now used as a virtual platform for storing and interacting with data that are intended to remain private yet accessible anywhere. He argues that because the Internet has evolved to allow new uses, data placed in the cloud merit some level of Fourth Amendment privacy protection. The Fourth Amendment is the right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.

In a sense that brings us back to the sordid business of security that I avoided in the first paragraph!