Talk:Cloud computing

Concerned about scope and precision

To me, cloud computing is a form of distributed processing that emphasizes the computing resources, not the applications, beyond the technologies (e.g., intelligent DNS redirectors) that send transactions/sessions to resources. There is absolutely no non-buzzword reason to link SaaS, for example, with clouds. Clouds, grids, and other distributed infrastructures that are ad hoc or demand-driven are radically different than SaaS built for high availability. So far, when I've done SaaS architectures with any concept of a service level agreement, as in healthcare, the computing infrastruture is far more specific than a cloud, with extensive load distribution, fault tolerance, and capacity planning.

I'd hate to see us drifting into one of the "Web 2.0" styles that makes everything so general that it provides no engineering guidance. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:11, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Everyone has a different idea of what cloud computing is - the article developed at Wikipedia is somewhat a consensus that covers/satisfies most views. Your "evolved grid" view of cloud is quite limited compared to others and the average reader has been conditioned to think Google Apps and Salesforce when they hear the term. How technical is our audience really? Sam Johnston 19:38, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Speaking as a Computers Workgroup Editor, CZ articles will be technically correct. We are expert consensus based, not general consensus based. That isn't to say that things cannot be written to be understandable by people with limited detail knowledge: our general target reader is a college undergraduate. One of our goals is "deconditioning" marketingspeak into accurate content. Our definitions are written (or approved) by subject matter experts, not "average readers".

Last year, we went through some of this with an Eduzendium (educator-guided student writing assignments), and there was a fair bit of insistence on rigor when dealing even with evolving technologies such as mashup, Ajax, etc.

Twitter and blogs are not preferred sources, and, when dealing with the industry press, it has to follow CZ: Neutrality Policy.

To convert this from WP to CZ style, the first steps are to give even conflicting definitions, and then compare and contrast. Real-world issues like availability/service level agreement must be covered.

Salesforce is SaaS, but with some fairly critical service delivery requirements. First, explain how clouds work without going off into the application level. Yes, failover and load distribution are things to be addressed early in the article, not SaaS that could be delivered with a distributed computing system totally under the control of a single vendor.

Let's start with Infrastructure as a Service and move from there. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:15, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok I've got a train to catch in <24 hours so don't really have time for this right now. I was planning to iteratively improve the Wikipedia content without Wikipedia interference over time (was there really a twitter ref in there?) Sam Johnston 20:44, 11 March 2009 (UTC)