Insights into the cloud, the technologies behind it and what the future holds

1. So what’s this ‘cloud’ stuff all about?
Simon Oxley
@soxley
warning: this is an infrastructure biased presentation

2. The Cloud: according to @soxley
Any service that is:
• Accessed via the Internet
• On demand near-instant provisioning
• Elastic can supply an infinite demand
• Managed by the provider
Q: Why is it called ‘The Cloud’?
A: Because that’s how architects draw ‘The Internet’

3. How did we get here?

4. 1944
The Colossus at Bletchley Park
The first Colossus is operational at
Bletchley Park. The Colossus was
designed to break the
complex Lorenz ciphers used by
the Nazis during WWII.
Each Colossus used 1,500
vacuum tubes and a series of
pulleys transported continuous
rolls of punched paper tape containing
possible solutions to a particular code.

5. 1953
IBM 701
IBM shipped its first electronic
computer, the 701. During three
years of production, IBM sold 19
machines to research laboratories,
aircraft companies, and the federal
government.
The system used electrostatic storage,
consisting of 72 Williams tubes with a
capacity of 1024 bits each
Rent: $11,900 monthly or more,
depending upon storage capacity.

6. 1961
IBM 1401
The IBM 1401 mainframe, the first in the
series, replaced the vacuum tube with smaller,
more reliable transistors and
used a magnetic core memory.
Demand called for more than 12,000 of the
1401 computers, and the machine´s success
made a strong case for using general-
purpose computers rather than
specialized systems.

7. 1965
DEC PDP-8
Digital Equipment Corp. introduced the
PDP-8, the first commercially
successful minicomputer. The PDP-8
sold for $18,000, one-fifth the price of
a small IBM 360 mainframe.
The speed, small size, and
reasonable cost enabled the PDP-
8 to go into thousands of manufacturing
plants, small businesses, and scientific
laboratories.

8. 1966
HP-2115
Hewlett-Packard entered the
general purpose computer
business with its HP-2115 for
computation, offering a computational
power formerly found only in much
larger computers.
It supported a wide variety of
languages, among them
BASIC, ALGOL, and FORTRAN.

9. 1981
IBM PC 5150
IBM introduced its PC , igniting a fast
growth of the personal computer
market.
The first PC ran on a 4.77 MHz Intel
8088 microprocessor and used
Microsoft´s MS-DOS operating
system.

10. 1987
IBM PS/2
IBM introduced its PS/2 machines, which
made the 3 1/2-inch floppy disk drive and
video graphics array standard for
IBM computers.
The first IBMs to include Intel´s 80286
chip, the company had shipped more than
1 million units by the end of the year.

11. from this point on, nothing really changed…
Everything just got faster smaller ,
and cheaper*
*or as Simon Wardley would say – “Commoditized” so why is this relevant…

12. What just happened?

13. Commoditization of the stack
Tubes, pulleys  transistors  integrated circuits & mass production
Applications
Operating System
Hardware
…common components enabling market expansion and increased competition

14. Step in Virtualization…
Virtualization was first developed in the 1960s to partition large,
mainframe hardware for better hardware utilization.
Then we started buying lots of small, cheap servers and forgot all
about virtualization… until they became:
a) Difficult to manage (‘00s of physical servers, power, space, etc.)
b) Massively under-utilized (as hardware became faster)
Applications App App App
Operating System OS OS OS
Hardware Hardware
…so we started to virtualize again, this time on commodity hardware

15. What about The Cloud?

16. The Cloud = Virtualization + Scale
Enabled by massive economies of scale.
As a result:
• Costs are driven down 1.7 GB of RAM , 1 virtual core, 160GB
• Competition is increased $0.085 per/hour
• Innovation is increased
…some call this Infrastructure-as-a-Service

17. It’s more than just hardware…
Cloud services are also
Applications & Platforms
Applications
Operating System/
Platform
Hardware
…more buzzwords: Platform-as-a-Service & Software-as-a-Service

18. Why should you care?
your business
Because cloud services enable
to concentrate on what it does best.
Which is probably not:
Installing Software
Configuring Servers Networks
Backups System Management
Deployment

19. We use a Cloud to represent the Internet and…
…to hide complex infrastructure and systems.
“We don’t care what happens in the cloud
– it just works”
Q: Should we care?
A: Yes, and No

20. key elements to success in the cloud:
• Transparency open communication
• Reliability measured, reported
• Standards lock-in, choice
= TRUST
…ask your cloud vendor these questions

21. So what’s next for The Cloud?
Some predictions…
The operating system will become irrelevant
Amazon: Relational Database Service a database without server/os management overhead
Everything will be available ‘as a service’
Spotify: A world of music music-as-a-service in the cloud
A mix of very large and niche-focused providers
Amazon: EC2, S3 etc. leading cloud innovation at a massive scale

22. Thank you