Assured Social Media

In the early 1900s no one would suspect that with a couple quick years, the kerosene man (I say man in this case because the prevalence of women in this type of field during this time period was quite frankly non-existent) was who filled their night lamps would become obsolete. These men and this entire business quickly disappeared with the appearance of electricity as a service provided by centralized utilities. In the early 1990s this same sort of shift happened with web services, while Prodigy, AOL, and CompuServe all had their trustworthy consumer base, things easily changed, and soon the age of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) was born. What we are witnessing today is equal to the same transformation; people are turning off their servers, getting rid of their workstations, and wiping out their overheating desktops, all in response to new offerings online that allow them to do exactly the same things, only cheaper, faster, and without having to install complicated software packages. The three important technologies which are moving this forward are virtualization, cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS).

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past 3 years (or were somehow awoken from a cryogenic sleep), you probably have been told about the lingo: Web 2.0, virtualization, cloud computing, software as a service, thin clients. With such a confusing jumble of abbreviations and reusable words, how can one know the difference between virtualization and cloud computing?

How is virtualization changing the game? To put it simply, virtualization is like being a building owner and renting out office space on all your unused floors. While the building stays the same, I have many different mini-offices throughout; I am making the most out of my building resource. In the same way, when I instantiate a “virtual pc”, I construct a smaller pc (office) within my current hardware (building). Instead of having the computer sit idle while I am working on one thing, I can have the computer doing many different things at the exact same time. For example, I could be running a windows “virtual PC” where I am playing a game, while at the same time I am running a Linux “virtual PC” to host my website, and running a Macintosh “virtual PC” to let me use Photoshop. All of this would be happening on the exact same computer hardware. I wouldn’t have to have 3 computer (3 office buildings), I would just have one computer (building) which I was using most optimally.

The cloud takes virtualization to a brand new height. Think about the leader of the building, and now assume that he has 3 buildings for rent. Since they have a lot of extra office available, they decide to rent out chunks of building for conventions and to tai chi instructors to operate their businesses. Since conventions and lessons do not take place all the time, they can schedule the building usage based on capacity. Now imagine that a very large conference comes into town. The manager can schedule building for this convention in one entire building (since it is very large) or spread the seminar out across multiple buildings (because of other events going on). The 3 building analogy is the same as cloud computing; where your computing resource is available across multiple pieces of hardware. To the end user (the renter) they are getting their own private “virtualized computer” (office to hold the event); to the servers (the buildings), they are distributing their workload across several pieces of hardware at the same time (the events).

All this talk about buildings and clouds tends to make the end user’s head spin. Where most individuals are focused, however, tends to be with Web 2.0, thin clients, and Software as a Service (Saas). In fact, a lot of clients are already using some form of SaaS and don’t already know it. Think about Facebook. To access Facebook all you need is a web browser. There is no software to install, no complex interface to learn, and best of all, it is available anywhere in the world you have access to the internet. Other services, like online file sharing services (such as Dropbox) allow consumers to access their files anywhere, or document editing tools like Microsoft Office. All of these programs represent how software as a service has the capacity to perform;a thin client is a very small, low powered computer (such as a net book) which connects to a much more powerful service through a network (web browser).

Thin clients and software as a service will free consumers from being tied to their desktops, and allow them to access their information anywhere they can find an internet connection. Just as kerosene and the telegraph became centralized utilities and services everyone takes for granted, in the near future software applications will become the same. No longer will people spend thousands of dollars on laptops that are rarely used, and difficult software programs they rarely touch; software as a service will become their new “electricity bill” and allow everyone the same access and ability as large companies without all the upfront charges.

Stephen is an Executive for a mid-sized Application Service Provider (ASP) and Software Consulting company in Tokyo, Japan. To read more about the virtual machine workstations, please see Real World Computer Science.