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I am old enough to remember when we were all going to switch to "Thin Net" clients for business.
This was where all the applications in a business would be hosted on a server and instead of full powered PC's on the desks we would all have glorified smart terminals: Motherboard, network card, video card.
How great it was going to be with just one copy of an application on the server. Just do one upgrade and everyone got a new version in the morning. No more licensing issues since it would all be at the server who wouldn't start more instances than were licensed.
Sound familiar?
Does anyone today know the last industry buzz word of "Thin Net"? I doubt it. It failed then, and it will offer about as much success now. In the end people want to hold on to what they own. If they buy MS Office then they want it on their PC so they can run it with or without an internet connection. Personally I like using Word while on an airplane. Or writing emails off-line so they can all upload when I land. I certainly don't want to buy thousands of dollars in software all to be hosted on some other PC and find myself able to do NOTHING when my broadband goes out because of a storm or some guy hits a phone pole, or a backhoe operator accidentally digs up a fiber optic trunk.
This is all about job security. You sell PC-based software for a decade. Thus you sell PC's that grow and grow in power. Then you tell everyone the new hot thing is to host the software on a server someplace. Everyone make money on new hardware. Coders (myself included) get all these great contracts re-developing programs that have already been created, but for a new platform. Then when people get tired of that, you sell them on this great new idea of "locally hosted software" meaning programs on their own hard drives. Once again, you sell new hardware and re-write the software. Everyone stays employed for decades.
Cynical I know, but true. Personally I would rather create something truly new in software than to re-cycle last year's program for this year's 'cloud'.
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What is the difference of hosting your apps with a third party hosting company versus putting them in the "cloud"? Is this the same thing? I do not get the difference.
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Well, this make two of us. 
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." - Red Adair
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The short answer is "Yes". It means the same thing. Do not be fooled by semantics.
The simple illustration is:
If your apps are OFFSITE (servers not owned by you), you can claim that they are in the cloud.
The difference could be that some apps are written by the people who own the cloud. An example is SALESFORCE.COM
Pendin Approval
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I feel that normal desktop applications don't need 'cloud', at least not yet. May be a few of them will move to clouds but that will take some time.
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Frankly, I don't know what it is, but I kind of liked the whole presentation they made, and the tech. stuff they talked about. Other than that, I don't give a Dime, of what cloud can do.
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It's more of what SALESFORCE can do for you.
Pendin Approval
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hi im bored 
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It should be cool to get +20 1s.
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The cloud may not be ideal for all things, but for certain business operations, it can be great. For example, flash media streaming. The amount of bandwidth required to host a video chat/forum can quickly grow to levels that our dedicated internet pipe can't handle it. Also, the cost of servers, software and licensing is prohibitive for getting started. We can use Amazon EC2 with Wowza for a reasonable price and can easily translate the costs on a project-by-project basis with no up-front costs. If video chat ever becomes a huge portion of our business, the cloud may not make as much sense given the incremental costs, but currently, it's a great way for us to "test the waters" without allot of money spent.
Personally, I look forward to having all of my personal data on a cloud-esque service somewhere. I already use an internet backup service, so it's not that far of a stretch to using actual cloud storage. The main obstacle for me is bandwidth availability (need at least 100mb transfer rates), reliability of the internet connection and good cloud-based software. High transfer rates are coming in the not too distant future (fiber). Reliability is actually very good now, but cloud-friendly software that's still a question mark.
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Matt Gullett wrote: Personally, I look forward to having all of my personal data on a cloud-esque service somewhere. I already use an internet backup service, so it's not that far of a stretch to using actual cloud storage.
Assuming you actually have any control over your data. Online/remote backup is worlds away from the cloud. The cloud data can be pawed over by the cloud-site at there will - and if you don't like it, well you can hope it's not stored in a proprietary format so you're stuck with them no matter what they do and what they charge.
The strategy of getting people invested, so to speak, in a system, and then gouging them because they know there's rarely momentum to do anything about it is a tested-and-true business model for the internet. Typical examples currently successful with the computer-owning masses: their ISP - lest they lose all their email and have to notify people of a change-of-address. Huge on-line storage is a clever web-mail scheme, for suddenly you've something more to lose. So you'll pay.
Using the cloud? You're putting your trust in what will surely be the domain of (primarily) huge businesses. A group who are intrinsically untrustworthy.
/xml> "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
| "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
| "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek dissappointment. If you are searching for perfection in yourself, then you seek failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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Until then - 
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I work in the embedded industry. Cloud computing has zero relevance to my targets. For my area, 1MB is an enormous program.
Do I need it for working on hosted systems? Why? As far as I can see, it's a concept dreamt up by some back-office people that sounds like a good way to sell more software (and possibly hardware).
Professional Geek,
Amateur Stage-Levelling Gauge
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It is over-hyped and over-buzzed, but it has its uses - for example for situations where you need a large number of machines at your disposal for a relatively short time, and don't have the budget for the equipment and/or power necessary. Testing and simulations are some examples.
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Not relevant to my work programming nor my casual at home programming. Let's see where cloud computing is in a couple of years.
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The closest thing we do is running a lot of virtual machines. Running an extra 100 clients as virtual machines is great for testing and the corporate wallet.
Modified cause I can't spell "clowd" cloud... Should take more time to proof read!
Hogan
modified on Tuesday, March 23, 2010 7:39 AM
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I was involved in several testing projects that involved using a bunch of Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instances to stress test web applications set up in environments that simulated the intended production environments. Quite cool and very affordable for smaller dev budgets - create a system image, deploy it to your EC2 instances, and pay only for the instance hours and bandwidth you actually use.
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Let my data/information/code pass through or be stored whilst big brother looks on?
Only when they peel my rigor mortis'ed fingers from my hard drive.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
| "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
| "It's a sad state of affairs, indeed, when you start reading my tag lines for some sort of enlightenment. Sadder still, if that's where you need to find it." - Balboos HaGadol
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definitely, maybe for some public data it is good ;} but you have to pay, so it's useless
d{^__^}b - it's time to fly
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It is going to be a total OT, but I love a red one and a black one from your signature. (a blue one is also fine but popular enough for me to see it before) 
Ah it seems that you've changed your signature in a meanwhile. I was talking about the previous one:
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek dissappointment. If you are searching for perfection in yourself, then you seek failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
A new one should make me sad but I find it funny.
Greetings - Jacek
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Just what I thought.
My answer is "No".
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tested, but not interested into
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