

Forget 'the Cloud'; 'the Fog' Is Tech's Future  - webdisrupt
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304908304579566662320279406

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amirmc
For everyone slating this article, please try thinking of it from a different
perspective (and look beyond the buzzwords). Here's my take.

(paraphrasing) 'In the rush to 'the cloud' people are disovering that there
are bottlenecks related to bandwidth to edge devices (phones etc) and this
problem will only increase as more and more devices become conencted (cf
Interent of everything). However, not all services/products _need_ to
constantly push data back and forth to a centralised place. There is enough
processing power in many devices such that more processing can happen at the
edge so why not build more applications this way? Cisco and IBM see merit in
this approach and hope to capture part of a (presumabley nacscent) market by
providing some kind of processing ability that is a little nearer the edge of
the network, rather than huge datacentres.'

Is that any better?

My view on the article is that until developers can more easily build
distributed applications, then we're stuck with the prevailing paradigm of
large centralised services. I don't see how anything from Cisco or IBM changes
anything other than having a slew of mini-datacentres that essentially do the
same thing.

What we really need are the means to create, deploy and maintain software in a
more distributed manner. Having all the fancy smart sensors in my home talking
to _my_ hub is preferable to having them all talking to their individual
silos. At least then, I can excersice some control of what's going on within
my network and benefit from e.g. my high-speed wireless vs my much slower
upstream bandwidth.

FWIW I'm working on an open source toolstack to make building distributed
systems a lot more stratightforward. Essentially, we want to get to a place
where everyone can own their own piece of the cloud. Whether that ends up
being called the 'fog' or 'dust cloud' or 'motes' is beside the point. You can
read an overview at [http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-
nymote/](http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/)

~~~
rsync
"There is enough processing power in many devices such that more processing
can happen at the edge so why not build more applications this way?"

... and thus spins the endless wheel of IT. You could find this exact same
sentence in any number of trade journals going back every five years to 1970.
Just replace "mainframe" with "cloud" and "client server model" with "fog".

See you in another five years...

~~~
amirmc
I don't understand what you're getting at. That things go in cycles? Sure, I
agree with that. Is there something else?

~~~
ghkbrew
He's talking about a specific cycle in computing where it has moved from
centralized processing to decentralized multiple times in the past. For
example

-first there were mainframes with glorified type-writes as terminals

-then we had personal computers

-then we had thin clients

-then we had thick clients

-etc

Basically this has happened before, will likely happen again, yet people (or
maybe just tech reporters) always seem so surprised when the pendulum swings
back the other way

~~~
jlarocco
I'm not sure anybody is surprised here.

The fact that the pendulum is swinging back the other way is news, though
maybe not very exciting news.

------
JunkDNA
Like most of you, this article caused multiple PR-early warning detectors to
fire in my head. It's unfortunate because there is a useful kernel to keep in
mind here.

If there's one thing you can bet on in computing, it's that technological
trends are a pendulum that swings back and forth over time. The pendulum has
been pegged on the "cloud" side for a long time.

One thing I've learned over the years is that the pendulum changes direction
pretty much at the precise moment you start thinking it's not going to. I
think "the cloud" falls in that category right now. I don't really know what
the swing away from cloud computing looks like, but I won't at all be
surprised when it shows up.

~~~
wmeredith
>> but I won't at all be surprised when it shows up.

Then by your own logic, it's still a long way off.

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girvo
The fog? Computing on the computers themselves? Isn't that basically what
we've already been doing since... well, literally since computers were
invented?

That said, I don't know if there is a snazzy marketing term, but offline-
capable apps with proper syncing support is the best solution for most stuff I
want to create and use. I have a super computer in my pocket, so yeah it's
nice to have snappy stuff done there, but data kept nice and backed up (as
well as dispersed across the rest of my devices) using the "cloud".

Calling it "the Fog" is dumb, however.

------
ama729

      > I'm as big a believer in the transformational power of cloud computing
      > as anyone you'll meet. Smartphones, which are constantly seeking and
      > retrieving data, don't make sense without the cloud, and any business
      > that isn't racing to push its data and software into someone else's data
      > center is, in my view, setting itself up for disruption by a competitor
      > who is.
    

\- A smartphone is useful even without internet.

\- My local restaurant wont get disrupted because it's not using Cloudfront.

At first I though it was a parody (Seriously, "the fog"?), well apparently I
wasn't wrong...

~~~
amirmc
> _" A smartphone is useful even without internet."_

In principle, I agree but that's not the way things are going. How many apps
do you have that have to talk to (someone else's) backend service to be at all
useful? For me I can think of Google Maps, Citymapper, Whatsapp and the
weather app (just off the top of my head). All these are useless to me without
a data connection.

~~~
ama729
Notes taking, GPS, music, to-do lists, calls(!), etc.

To me it's especially the "don't make sense without the cloud" bit that I find
egregious.

~~~
turingbook
Your notes should use the cloud to persist, or they will disappear when the
devices are out of work.

Where did you get music? Scrape from CD?

As for GPS and calls, their infrastructures are also part of the Cloud.

~~~
geon
GPS is part of the cloud? Seriously?

------
pling
My word that article triggered my bullshit detector instantly.

Cloud, fog, internet of things, big data, smart, edge computing. Ugh.

~~~
bitslayer
It is basically an ad for a new Cisco marketing term. "I guess we should go
with the Cisco solution because they have that fog."

~~~
pling
It's a bad marketing term as well. Just makes me think of coughing
Victorians...

------
josefresco
Stopped reading/caring when I read "the fog" a term created by "Marketers at
Cisco Systems Inc."

Noting to see here, just more PR fluff.

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mindcrime
And, of course, anybody dealing with "the fog" needs a "fogbeam"[1]. :-)

All joking aside, this seems like a weird term to try and coin. Isn't it just
what people are mostly calling the "hybrid cloud" today?

[1]: [http://www.fogbeam.com](http://www.fogbeam.com)

------
joncrocks
Coming soon, 'the mist'.

~~~
camus2
just trademarked "haze" computing! lol

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JTxt
The 'cloud' idea bothered me from the start. But not as much about bandwidth
and latency, but a loss of control of private data and that the company and
network become single points of failure.

It's about control of my data; I have to give it up to to benefit from a
computing service.

Homomorphic encryption is an interesting thought: Allow my neighbors or a
computing service to process my data without them able to see it.
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption)

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webmaven
Also:
[http://imdb.com/rg/an_share/title/title/tt0080749/](http://imdb.com/rg/an_share/title/title/tt0080749/)

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bchjam
I guess they got tired of calling it mesh networking

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thecolorblue
The problem is bandwidth? I don't buy it.

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eli_gottlieb
Not utility fog composed of nanobots; I don't care.

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al2o3cr
"That's what you want me to believe, you f __ks! I see through your fog! I don
't talk to robots! I'm going to call Commissioner Duck!"

