Cloud Computing and the Future of the Internet
Thin Clients Likely Next Big Step in Technology Progression
Mar 25, 2009
Cloud computing is a term that variously applies to numerous aspects of using the Internet as a host for applications, files, or services that have historically been based on a workstation. Nearly all computer users can realize the concept in terms of electronic mail hosting services, i.e. a commercial mail provider hosting a user's email account and a workstation or terminal serving strictly as a portal to reach those services.
This concept may soon apply on a mass scale to other aspects of use, such as word processing, file sharing, and scores of other items. Google Apps and Apple's MobileMe are two recent examples of initiatives that focus on this concept, although some aspects of these systems require installed software on the user's workstation.
Etymology of the Term as Technology Progresses
Referring to a virtual data enclave as a "cloud" traces its origins to telecommunications, specifically phone services, from which many computer terms and practices evolved. According to Wikipedia's entry on cloud computing, the term is derived from the standard among engineers of using an image of a cloud to signify the Internet on network diagrams.
A cloud was presumably chosen as a recognizable metaphor for a very complex and otherwise unimaginable system. Thus a natural occurrence came to abstractly represent a man-made system.
In 1999, in an article entitled "The Internet Cloud" in The Industry Standard, writers Jessie Holliday Scanlon and Brad Wieners explored the methodology behind the choice and jokingly opine that among the probable reasons were the facts that clouds are easy to draw and allow one to easily "obscure what they don't know." There is likely some wisdom in this; the Internet is, after all, an extremely complex system.
Thin Clients
The term thin client is commonly used for a terminal or computer which allows most or all of the data processing to occur on a server, be it geographically nearby or not. Thin clients can refer to software but the term is increasingly applied to compact computers which offer minimum hardware to access a network and hosted services.
Perhaps a good delineation point is to term thin clients machines without hard drives and traditional computers, or "fat clients," those that have an onboard storage and robust processing capability. Although no formal industry standard dictates use of the term. Thin clients are dependant on cloud computing, or pulling services from a network, but cloud computing can be conducted with a traditional fat client as well. The terms are not necessarily synonymous.
Early Visionaries
As early as the 1990s, even before many had fully realized the potential of the Internet, Oracle leader Larry Ellison foresaw personal computer progression moving to thin clients pulling services from the cloud.
In a 15 November 2005 article on "Low End Mac," an Apple computer news and history website, Tom Hornsby details Ellison's attempts to acquire Apple and develop an operating system for the Macintosh line which would introduce thin clients to the general public. The acquisition never occurred, however, and the companies each moved forward in different directions.
Moguls Look to the Cloud
In 2007, personal computing giants Bill Gates, then CEO of Microsoft, and Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, both alluded to the cloud as the next logical step during an interview with Wall Street Journal writers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.
In response to a question about the coming landscape, Gates said, " The notion of what the new form factors look like, what natural interface can do, the ability to use the cloud, the Internet, to do part of the task in a complementary way to the local experience...we’ll look back at this as one of the great periods of invention." The interview was conducted live in front of an audience on 30 May 2007 during a technology conference and contained numerous references to movement toward Internet computing.
Ironically, and perhaps a bit ahead of the times, Jobs had earlier modeled a system on networked computing. In the late 1980s, after resigning temporarily from Apple, Inc. Jobs formed NeXT, a company which built high end computers which were intended for the education market.
The initial core of the company's strategy was to utilize an early version of thin client operating systems but the idea largely failed to gain mass appeal since users were not yet accustomed to operating in a virtual environment.
Today, with wide-ranging familiarity of the Internet, 3G capabilities, and availability of Wi-Fi, many experts believe the general public is ready to move their basic computing needs off of their PC and into the cloud.
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