
Larry Ellison Still Hates "Cloud Computing Nonsense" (Video) - edw519
http://www.techcrunchit.com/2009/10/01/larry-ellison-still-hates-cloud-computing-nonsense-video/
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dpapathanasiou
How is the "cloud" any different from the "net" (as in Net Computer, or NC),
which he promoted so heavily in the mid nineties?

" _That magic part would connect the Network Computer to the Net. There would
only be rudimentary software and memory on the Network Computer. Most software
and serious memory would be out there on the Net where it could be easily
maintained. The system would run on Java and use Oracle databases. Microsoft
software would be nowhere in sight._ "

<http://www.mondaymemo.net/031103feature.htm>

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SamAtt
I think that's the point he's trying to make. He's basically just saying "buzz
words suck" and then riffing on the term Cloud Computing for a few minutes. It
only seems contradictory because Techcrunch framed it as commentary on cloud
computing rather than the silly joking around it's supposed to be.

In fact, Techcrunch actually misquotes him. The Techcrunch article opens with
"According to Larry Ellison, it’s nonsense and water vapor" when in fact what
Ellison says is "[The Cloud] is NOT water vapor" (the point he was making is
that the cloud is just actual computers on the other side of a network not "a
cloud" which is where water vapor comes in)

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nobody_nowhere
Oh for the love of god, Larry, shut your smug mouth.

It's so easy to sit back on your mega yacht and dismiss cloud as something
that's always been around and always will be and blah blah blah, but for a
little startup it's MANA FROM HEAVEN.

To be able to do massively compute intensive or storage intensive tasks on
demand without sinking a million dollars of capital into a datacenter is the
difference between success and failure for my little startup.

How many times have you heard "oh, there's a ten week lead time on that
server" or "there's no more power in the cage" or "there are no more cages at
the datacenter" or "i'll be up all night recovering the raid array" or any
number of other hidden costs in owning or trying to own hardware?

We check our cost projections for buy vs cloud almost every week, and when the
time comes we'll definitely buy, but for we couldn't be doing what we're doing
without it. Sure it's overhyped, but so was the fucking web. Yes, there's
weird performance stuff and not always enough boxes, but so what? Sorry if I'm
missing a subtler message he had, but i had to turn off the video after about
30s because it hurt my brain.

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wyday
He's not criticizing cloud computing, he's saying "cloud computing" is an
idiotic idiom. And it is. "Cloud computing" is just distributed computing. It
has been around for decades. (See:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_computing>)

But, it's the latest tech word-soup. Like in 2005 when everything Javascript
became "Ajax", everything distributed becomes "Cloud".

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nobody_nowhere
As far as idioms go, it's as good as any. "Cloud computing" != "disributed
computing" -- it's on-demand virtual hardware and storage. That's how most
users of cloud think of it, in my experience.

I was hugely skeptical of the cloud concept -- sneered at it, even -- until i
started doing the cost/benefit analysis.

~~~
AndrewO
On-demand virtual hardware and storage is Infrastructure as a Service. I'd be
willing to bet that most developers think of that when they think of the cloud
(since, as you point out, they're actual users of the cloud).

But then some marketer somewhere (I'm guessing Salesforce, but that's my own
bias :) decided that any web application could call itself "Cloud" (since
"Software as a Service" was no longer cool. Again, I'm blaming Salesforce for
flogging that horse to death...). This way, even normal people can use the
cloud/buy cloud services, and it's just as easy as using the Web since it's
really just the Web! (Way to go, smart and savvy Internet^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCloud
user—you're so much smarter than everyone else and can expect to get promoted
over/laid more than your coworkers still using that ancient Web 2.0!)

The Wikipedia article on Cloud Computing is a good illustration on how vague
the term has gotten, especially how ill-defined all of the sub-classes are:
Platform as a Service, Application as a Service, Service as a Service. Pretty
much anything on the Web can be made into a definition of "cloud" somehow.

I'd really like to see Cloud Computing only applied to things involving
immense elastically scalable computing and storage that can be provisioned and
taken offline immediately, but I don't think that's going to happen. The
meaningfulness of the term has been destroyed by the rampant "me-too"-ing of
the industry.

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tybris
To me, Cloud stands for 'a service of which you don't know how it works'.

People have been drawing the Internet as a cloud for many, many years. No one
knows how his packet actually gets delivered and that's what makes it so
powerful. Even this simple piece of text goes through an intricate combination
of radio waves, copper and fiber criss-cross through the world. but... I don't
have to worry about any of it! All I have is this dead simple IP interface to
my NIC (or URL interface to my browser) and I don't have to worry about
whatever kind of nasty stuff goes on behind it. That is the most powerful idea
in the history of information technology.

Cloud Computing is simply applying the principle to computing infrastructure.
I don't know how EC2 works, I don't know where they get their machines, I
don't know where they get their power, I don't know where they put my
instances, I don't know who's managing the cabling, ... and I'm a happier man
because of it.

~~~
kingsley_20
I would change that to 'a service of which you don't _care_ how it works.'

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ynniv
Please correct this title - Ellison clearly states that he hates the term
"cloud computing", not the idea of virtualized services.

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sammcd
Yes, I agree with you here, and I agree with him.

When the term web 2.0 came out I hated it. It was just a description for what
I was already doing. Similarly I didn't like the term cloud computing at
first.

However the thing I have missed is that these terms are useful to explain to
users what I am doing. If this is the case then these terms have value.

~~~
ynniv
If you watch the video (which is pretty funny, and rather intelligent), his
exasperation comes from the popular insistence that "cloud computing" is a new
paradigm, and that businesses that don't use "the cloud" will die.

To somewhat paraphrase him: "All a cloud is, is computers and network (in
terms of technology). In terms of business model, you could say that its
rental."

Most of computing industry will remain unchanged, except maybe Dell's small
business market, some of Microsoft's licensing revenue, and lots of desktop
software that would be more productive as a network service.

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kingsley_20
Hype aside, there's no denying that the number of business offering and
consuming services built on the cloud model have increased dramatically
recently.

But no, instead of debating what the new services, platforms and business
models are going to actually mean to the industry, let's quibble about the
terms people are hyping for it.

Well played, Mr. Ellison.

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gizmo
When there's free publicity in giving old tech a new label, then of course
companies are going to take advantage of that. Suppose you're a CEO and some
interviewer asks you if you will move your software to the cloud, or interface
with the cloud you pretty much have to advocate you have big plans for the
cloud (even when it's nothing substantial) or you'll be put on the defensive.
Since you can't persuade interviewers or the general public that cloud
computing is meaningless for your business (if you already do SaS), it's a no
win situation.

That said, I do think that cloud computing is innovation, in the sense that
you can no longer point to an individual server and say "my software runs on
that machine". We're now in an environment where -nobody- knows where your
software is, and yet it still works.

Cloud computing is way overhyped and suitable for relatively few situations,
but there is some innovation here.

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jacquesm
If your main business consists of selling very expensive licenses on a per-
node or per-cpu basis of a relational database then it makes perfect sense to
speak these words. That doesn't make them true though.

The cloud is a real game changer, even though we are still working out exactly
what it will do for us and how to deal with lots of issues (privacy,
responsibility, reliability) it's got the established software businesses that
came to power in the 80's and 90's quaking in their boots.

This will change the landscape of computing more than anything since '95, but
it isn't going to happen overnight.

For every CTO that holds off a little longer based on Ellisons words the cash
registers may ring one more time.

Key-value storage engines combined with cloud facilities go right at the heart
of Oracles core business. What else is he supposed to say ?

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jgrahamc
_Key-value storage engines combined with cloud facilities go right at the
heart of Oracles core business._

Really? It seems to me that key-value systems are more of a problem for MySQL
databases than Oracle ones. Pop quiz: how many people implementing key-value
storage ever seriously considered buying an Oracle database?

I'm guessing very few.

I think what Ellison is saying is that cloud computing is nothing new. It's
just a new name for distributed computing and we've had that for years. In
fact, if you go back far enough we had SaaS on time-sharing systems:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing>

~~~
jacquesm
They haven't considered buying an Oracle database when they're small, but when
they grow now they don't have to either.

And bigger players are looking at switching from their expensive-software-on-
big-iron to the cloud as well, and as a consequence will evaluate key-value
storage systems vs rdbms, and some of them will switch.

~~~
jgrahamc
What I'm arguing is that the trade off is key-value vs. MySQL for small
companies. They pick their path at that point. If you go with RDBMS then you
might end up at Oracle at some point. If you go with key-value then I guess
you stay there.

If you've gone with key-value it's because you've decided that you don't need
RDBMS features.

~~~
jacquesm
We agree on all of that.

I'm just wondering about those cases where lots of data is stored in RDBMS
which could have been stored in key-value storage engines as well. And with
the increased query capabilities of k-v engines the no-mans-land is getting
thinner.

The incentive to switch is equal to the license fee - the cost of the switch.

And possibly the convenience of being able to use cheap non-specialist
hardware.

For the majority of the companies out there the cloud is still more expensive
(and more risky, and privacy sensitive) than storing it on their own
infrastructure.

But there are solutions in that space as well, having your own on-site
'private cloud', using all of the infrastructural tricks of cloud computing
without the loss of control or the service premium.

For many big businesses I think that makes good sense.

