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I'm somewhat surprised at how few people voted positively on this one...I expected everyone to be jumping on it.
Does "edge caching" count as "the cloud"? I don't even know where the lines are anymore, it's all just a bunch of buzzwords. But I imagine if S3 can be considered part of the cloud, so can edge caching. I'm currently debating between a cloud storage system (i.e. S3) and edge caching for an application that is in development. Either will save bucketloads of money for my client and make me a ton more (less overhead). The nature of the app is such that one week there could be zero users, and the next week there could be 100,000 users downloading multimedia content at once, so it is perfectly suited for a "pay as you go" cloud environment. 100,000 users isn't huge, so a couple servers can handle the processing/database load, but try streaming video to that many users at once without racking up an insane bill for the required dedicated 8 gigabits of bandwidth 
My monthly bill if three such "waves" of users come in a cloud environment: about $3500
My monthly bill if I needed 8 gigabit connections: hahaha...riiight...I'll leave that one for your imagination.
modified on Monday, November 3, 2008 7:10 AM
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"Cloud" sounds a good idea but users may not see its benefit until it becomes a proven reliable techinology/service. Past experience shows that many tech/services disappeared before they even really started.
TOMZ_KV
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It is and will always be, useless.
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With all due respect...you, sir, are ignorant if you think all cloud services are useless. Implemented properly, you get much higher reliability than any self-made or managed hosting solutions, you can scale at a moments notice, and your costs can be substantially reduced.
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Yes maybe so.. it works for a few Businesses.. but hey .. ...tell me what happens when it goes 'tits up' and its out of your hands in respect of being able to sort out the recovery....??????
How much will it then cost you .....?????????????????????
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Well, our software has the benefit of being able to target many different "cloud"-like environments. It is integrated into Voxel's CDN as well as Amazon S3, and we will be looking at adding a couple others very soon. Switching between providers is as simple as changing a setting.
Will some go belly up? Probably. The services we target all have similar pricing models and prices, so our customers will never see the difference. If you are telling me cloud-like services will one day disappear entirely and I won't be able to find a suitable replacement to plug into, I'm going to call you crazy. CDN's and edge caching services have been around for a long time and are here to stay.
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You miss my point .... What I am saying is that for Hosting Games and Streaming activities may be ok in a Cloud enviorenment.. But for the sort of Services that I tend to mainly work for: Governmental:Local Authority: Police Authorities:Health services:Financial Services and Retail Services...
Are NOT going to allow their bespoke applications to sit on a Cloud Structure.
As I have previously said... it may be ok for Gaming/Streaming activities as it does have cost Benefits...but for those services that have a very strict Auditing Control on security it will not be an option. I would guess that on a percentage basis that means around 70-80% of the largest Businesses that MS are trying to target wil NOT take on a Cloud Structure. The take up will only happen mainly for those that have Gaming/Streaming activities as their main agenda.
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Yes, I definately missed your point...I don't know how I could possibly figure out that this is what you were trying to get across in your last post. All I saw was something about "what will you do if it goes tits up," which to me means "what will you do if the service goes down," which is what I attempted to answer.
As stated in a newer post of mine - you don't have to host every part of an application in the cloud. Even just hosting the images offloads a huge about of bandwidth and disk activity from your server. I host a municipal police service application as well as a couple other government organization applications, and any static resources (i.e. images, script files, etc) are served from an edge caching service. These are hardly "ultra top secret" files. The database with all their information is stored on my own secured servers.
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Apologies...... I used a reply that was used also for another posting further on. I felt it was the same answer so used that one. Perhaps I should have re-edited it before posting the reply to your submission.
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Hopefully this whole cloud concept is just a phase. Fair play to some cloud services like Google Docs etc, but moving the whole OS onto the cloud just seems ridiculous to me, call me old fashioned but it is still possible to use a PC without an internet connection, isnt it?
Jonathan Harker
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jharker1987 wrote: call me old fashioned but it is still possible to use a PC without an internet connection, isnt it?
Only if you are happy to activate windows via phone.
Simon
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Simon Stevens wrote:
Only if you are happy to activate windows via phone.
Only if you use Vista. 
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Fabio Franco wrote: Only if you use Vista.
Good point. Although doesn't XP require activation too? It's too long since I've installed anything but my msdn license version to remember. (I abandoned windows at home for Ubuntu 6 months ago and haven't looked back)
Simon
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I never had to. I love XP and I don't see myself migrating to Vista (or Windows 7) anytime soon. It fits my needs, performance is great, compatibilty is better and I don't have to worry about activation.
What I think it does is a silent validation while you are connected (I've witnessed a pirate copy of XP been detected as such after some time connected to the internet).
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jharker1987 wrote: moving the whole OS onto the cloud just seems ridiculous to me, call me old fashioned but it is still possible to use a PC without an internet connection, isnt it?
Sure it is. Azure is just an additional way to provide software. It isn't a monolithic structure--you can use all of it, some of it, or none of it. Nobody, least of all MS, is saying that the desktop OS is going away.
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cjdunford wrote: Nobody, least of all MS, is saying that the desktop OS is going away.
I can see it heading that way
Jonathan Harker
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jharker1987 wrote: cjdunford wrote: Nobody, least of all MS, is saying that the desktop OS is going away.
I can see it heading that way
When the OS moves to the web, I'll stop upgrading. (I heard Ubuntu 9.04 plans to "blur the line between desktop and web apps; UGH).
Or maybe stop using computers.
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Member 4134890 wrote: When the OS moves to the web, I'll stop upgrading. (I heard Ubuntu 9.04 plans to "blur the line between desktop and web apps; UGH).
It's a sale pitch. The net nor the browser is nowhere near was ready as people think to handle that uproar in bandwidth. Maybe people will want to do that eventually, but in today's world it ain't gonna happen. But, I'm with you, if it does go that way, that's the day I start working on my own OS or join a project for one. 
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jharker1987 wrote: but moving the whole OS onto the cloud just seems ridiculous to me
Nobody is crazy enough to try that, if they have a lick of sense. The Internet has a long way to go before this is ever even feasible, and a cloud won't be the catalyst for this at all.
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phase in, phase out. be patient, it will pass.
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It'll be as much a phase as Web 2.0 is.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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I think this is just the embrionary stage of what can be a future MS OS...
The target is clear and they need some specimens to test things out.
There's nothing wrong about this kind of procedure, it's been applied for ages on several areas.
What bothers me is that it's not presented as a set of experiments to achieve a goal but as "the new greatest thing!" that it obviously isn't.
AlexCode
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Sorry ,
But no one has really thought about the consequences of moving Apps from local Servers to these new Cloud Locations.
Firstly most Govermental and Local Authority Unit have to abide by strict auditing controls... one of which is that :How much control over the Application do you have:.....With a Cloud .... none.
I think MS must have its brains up in the "CLOUDS" 
Its not going to be much of a starter  .......Not from some of the largest Govermental/Authority sectors.
ARH
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Yeah I entirely agree, there are very large sectors of the market which could never or would never allow their data to go anywhere.
Frankly I just don't see this as anything more than Microsoft reacting to others and trying to shove it down developers throats and brainwash them to go out and shove it down other developer's throats, they think we should all be excited about this without thinking through the consequences.
Sure there is a market for it but it isn't much of an overlap with Microsoft's traditional Windows market; the bread and butter market for Windows is not the sort of companies that are going to put all their data online. In fact I find it hard to think of any business sector that would accept this, at least no one with even the slightest bit of confidential information or anyone who has a business that relies entirely on their computers to be up and running. When it's all in house they have complete control over what goes on, once it's out of their hands they have to rely on others for something that they really just don't need to at all.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it."
-Sam Levenson
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