Comments on: The Cloud Isn’t a Mainframe. Seriously.

By: Cloud Computing: Something New Under the Sun? « Business Transaction Management Blog

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:15:15 +0000

[...] while we’ll agree that there are significant differences between mainframe-based time sharing and cloud computing, it’s key to note that in both computing paradigms, there is need to attain visibility into the [...]

By: Thomas Lukasik

Thomas Lukasik — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:24:35 +0000

>> “you can’t expand performance or max users”

I’m not arguing that (Mainframe == Cloud) — but IMHO this isn’t the best “proof” that they’re different. If IBM thought that the money was there, I’d bet that mainframe computers could be retro-fitted with (or made to look as if they had) similar “elasticity” with (relatively) little effort.

TJL

By: mike bradshaw

mike bradshaw — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:24:04 +0000

interesting points.

One minor mistake, it is Microsoft Sidekick not Nokia.
Also, why did you use Bit.ly for the link rather than a normal direct link?

By: Derik Pereira

Derik Pereira — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:56:18 +0000

My response, http://bit.ly/3JPUFI

Making clouds out of mips and other things.

By: James Watters

James Watters — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:01:06 +0000

@kevin

Love your thread about availability being the new scarce resource…not 100% sure I agree with it vs. old model, but very interesting and made me think.

@rizzn

I like the flexibility thread–its flexibility at a cost–great software and application design…

By: Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:54:25 +0000

The flexibility of the cloud, to me, is the key differentiating factor. When you talk about a mainframe, short of performing upgrades on a single machine, you can’t expand performance or max users.

The typical cloud is engineered to be nearly infinitely expandable.

From a user perspective (or, as James says, the CNN crowd), sure, it looks similar. Functionally, it’s a lot different.

By: Kevin Neely

Kevin Neely — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:31:50 +0000

I started to respond, but it got too lengthy, so I wrote it up and posted. http://is.gd/4ygLF

Basically, I still fail to see the difference between a cloud and a mainframe. They are different, yes, no doubt. But still, there is a scarcity of resource availableto the end user that is easily-solvable by a data center (or ten).