Many people like to postulate: first there were mainframes, then came client-server, followed by the browser. Now, cloud computing is emerging as the next big thing.
Indeed, cloud computing has spawned lots of talk bordering on hype (or is it the other way around?). Not to mention, it seems like just about everyone is re-positioning their products to somehow include cloud in their brands.
But where are the hard, real numbers? In fact, there’s very little data, and lots of secrecy around cloud usage. Amazon, for instance, keeps their numbers private.
Our objective here is to find as many points of data to let people know if cloud computing is indeed growing, and, if so, by approximately how much.
What Do You Count?
But in trying to count the cloud usage, a natural question emerges: “what do you count?”
One way to approach this problem is to break it down into its two main components: the observable universe and dark matter.
The observable universe includes where public web sites are being hosted. These days, web sites can be hosted at any of a number of web hosting providers such as GoDaddy, SiteGround, and InMotion, or at one of the public cloud providers such as Amazon, Rackspace, Joyent or OpSource. This is the observable universe because we can actually count how many of the sites out there are being hosted at a web hosting or cloud provider.
Then, there’s the “dark matter.” Like in the universe, the dark matter is probably larger, more significant and ultimately will determine the fate of cloud computing.
Unfortunately, all of this is dark matter is really difficult to count. For instance, much of the dev/test work being done in the cloud is being run by developers from within larger organizations. Therefore, at this point, this Counting the Cloud research focuses on what is observable.
How Do You Count the Cloud?
Basically, what I did to count the cloud was to take a look at the top 500,000 sites, and then using various mechanisms check to see whether each site was running on a traditional web hosting or cloud service.
In this recorded webinar, Guy Rosen talks about his results counting the cloud.
Counting the Results
So what were the results?
To see the actual results (as of Feb 2010), tune into this webinar excerpt from “The Real Cloud” Episode 2 with OpSource’s CTO John Rowell and find out!
Guy Rosen is Co-Founder and CEO of Vircado, creators of a breakthrough proxy-as-a-service platform. He is well known for his blog, Jack of all Clouds, a respected source of unique data and analysis on the cloud computing industry. Guy's noted writings include the State of the Cloud series, a monthly comparison of the adoption of cloud providers, and his investigative work uncovering previously unknown cloud usage figures. Guy has a long history in the technology industry in technology, management and marketing-related roles.
Content
