John C. Dvorak, a graduate of UC Berkeley, has been all over the media in recent years, busy as a technology pundit and columnist.
In a column just published in that old standby, PC Magazine, he references Larry Ellison’s comments about the Cloud that we discussed in this space recently. The surprise is that Dvorak seems to agree with Ellison.
In fact, the title of his column is, “Back When the Cloud was Dumb.” Dvorak says that the Cloud is nothing but remote storage and client-server, saying “there is nothing new about remote storage and client-server, and that’s pretty much what we are talking about here. ”
Although Mr. Dvorak has been official in-house geek and tech-pundit extraordinaire for all sorts of media outlets, including NPR,the NY Times, and Tech TV, he is not very accurate in his belittling description of the cloud.
Like many seasoned industry vets, he rails against the new term, “cloud computing,” with an emotional passion. Like Mr. Ellison, he informs us that there is no water vapor doing the processing, that it’s just old-fashioned mainframes: “Why, though, does it have to be called the “cloud?” Where is this cloud anyway? It’s not in the sky and it doesn’t hold water. So why “cloud?” Then, he goes on to his priority dislike: the
Internet itself—-which is, of course, the “cloud” in question. He says, “let us look at the Internet and what it has done. It has completely reversed the revolution that began with the desktop computer. It has returned us to a networked environment with centralized control. ” Now we see the clue to his real agenda—-Mr. Dvorak believes the Internet has undone The Revolution! ( Perhaps it’s that Berkeley influence.) As he says,”Don’t kid yourself. The entire idea that people should have complete control of their computing needs with complete desktop subsystems, from hard disks to printers to telemetry gear, is frowned upon by a society that prefers centralized control. No matter that centralized control is too expensive!”
But he verges on paranoia when he says, ” One thing is for certain: They are trying to convince us that the cloud will come and go and come and go when really it’s just old-fashioned mainframe-based distributed computing from 30 years ago all gussied up. They are trying to trick us.”
Really, John? The whole Internet is a conspiracy, and THEY are trying TRICK us? Whoa! If anything, Mr. Dvorak is one of THEM, one of the tech-savvy elite power structure. But claiming that Cloud Computing is just client/server is simply wrong. Like Mr. Ellison, Mr. Dvorak ridicules what he clearly doesn’t understand. Like Ellison, all he sees are products, “remote servers, as I would prefer they be called,” he says. He misses the point entirely that Cloud Computing refers to a service—it’s about how the information processing is delivered, not what is delivering the processing. And delivering processing power to endusers on an as-needed basis, with no capital investment required by them, liberates them. It enables small businesses to get access to the same sophisticated databases and applications that the giant corporations use. Before Cloud Computing became available, only very rich, large organizations could afford the infrastructure to manage Big Data. Using the Internet to leverage computing capacity creates a level playing field, with small and medium players being able to compete equally. I would think that Mr. Dvorak’s Berkeley sensitivities would welcome such a development.
Bill Patch 10/10/2012