The Cloud is a Mainframe. Just fluffier

On ye ole twitter, I came across this interesting post about Cloud Computing (do I need to capitalize this anymore) being vastly different than mainframe client-server computing. I disagree, yet I agree with many of the specific points in the article. (Can you tell I went to law school?)

Okay, the amount of computing available is far different, but the way in which cloud computing actually works is not that far a cray from the old mainframe days.

At least when one talks about hosted clouds, like the Amazon and Google ones mentioned in the article. Sure, they may be a bit more nebulous and disaster-proof, having data centers all over the world, which is nice. However, I am still a client w/ my web browser as a terminal, connecting to a large compute resource that will refresh my screen when I make updates or changes. In "olden days", the resource that was scarce was actual compute power, and -to a lesser extent- storage.

Now the scarce resource is availability. I want to access my data from everywhere. Sound easy? Not when by "everywhere" I mean that I want to access it no matter what I have with me. Left my laptop at home? No problem, I will use my phone. Phone is dead? Not to worry, I will log on using my friend's laptop. And in all these methods, I am presented with a familiar interface no matter if I am using Windows, MacOSX, Symbian, Android, Linux, or something else.

To me, this doesn't sound different than the mainframe computing of yesteryear. In fact, for a long time, that model still had an advantage in terms of user experience because it did not matter what terminal in whichever building I used, I was presented with the same interface.

Where the Cloud starts to become different is when it is actually made up of the clients themselves. I want to see more peer-to-peer clouds. Services like Opera Unite where the clients are also serving up content. That is where innovation is and once again puts control into the hands of the users rather than a few corporate-run clouds.