From storage to processing – the cloud’s next step?

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Gareth Cartman.

When speculating about where the cloud is heading next, we often think about extra security layers and how hybrid models might grow in prevalence. However, collaboration on the cloud is becoming more of a consideration as files grow. Could the cloud’s next big step be from mostly storage to mostly processing?

Cloud computing or PaaS?

As always with commonly misunderstood areas such as the cloud, there are a host of phrases being bandied around which often mean the same thing to some people, and different things to others. When people talk of cloud computing, they could either be talking about ‘the cloud’ in general, or they could be talking about cloud processing – the act of actually collaborating on a file online, for example, through Google Docs (at its most simple). However, PaaS, a variation of SaaS, is closer to this definition…

PaaS (Platform as a Service) can be quite lightweight, but, in fact, delivers environments as a service, helping people build applications on the provider’s infrastructure. What this requires, however, is fast processing, and speedy access to data. As SIRE’s Russell Cook points out, this often doesn’t give a good user experience, and people tend to make local copies that are then uploaded to the cloud in order to save time…

Read more from the source @ http://cloudtweaks.com/2014/11/storage-processing-clouds-next-step/