Monday, December 1, 2008

Is the Cloud Looking Like HDDVD vs. Blu-Ray?

I was reading through this post from Mary-Jo Foley about cloud computing, but more specifically about approaches to (in this case, data caching) how it gets done. I have to admit, for me, I sort of thought of the cloud options as being "out there" to the point where it just happens - who cares how? But now, after reading this and doing more poking around the 'net, reading articles, etc., I am beginning to wonder if we'll have emerging standards that impact how you develop applications, deploy those applications and support them.

If this ends up being a "war of formats" something like the HDDVD and Blu-Ray format wars, it would seem like this could really cripple adoption of the whole cloud computing model, certainly to the point where you'd have to add a new layer of testing and working with your systems to see what works best.

Mary-Jo's article focused on the cache element - how data is made available in a high-performance environment. It bleeds over into content delivery (since the platforms define it differently), which brings up additional points that you'll want to understand.

Perhaps I'm just misunderstanding, perhaps I'm over-estimating the amount of choice you really have in how things are done "up there" - but it's certainly worth trying to understand and see where the performance, security and implementation differ between options and platforms.

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