David Overton: GIS in the cloud

Editor's Notes

• #10: The move to cloud hosting requires a shift in mindset similar to that when stepping away from apps stored on your own machine to those managed on the web. In the same way that Google Docs means you no longer have to install Microsoft Word, and Spotify means you can listen to music without downloading it from iTunes, with cloud hosting there's no longer a need to lease a server: you can use as much or as little as you need. What can vendors provide us in the cloud Properties of Cloud Shared infrastructure On demand self service Elastic and scalable Consumption based business model Virtualised Burton Group Infrastructure as a service Platform as a service Software as a service Amazon etc. Access to comprter in the cloud Tools for builing apps – pltforms google apps – tie-in once created End user uses, like flickr, sales force dot com – elasticity As a measure of
• #11: Applications in the cloud : this is what almost everyone has already used in the form of gmail, yahoo mail, wordpress.com (hosting this blog), the rest of google apps, the various search engines, wikipedia, encyclopedia britannica, etc. Some company hosts an application in the internet that many users sign-up for and use without any concern about where, how, by whom the compute cycles and storage bits are provided. The service being sold (or offered in ad-sponsored form) is a complete end-user application. To me all this is SaaS, Software as a Service, looking to join the ‘cloud’ craze. Platforms in the cloud : this is the newest entry where an application platform is offered to developers in the cloud. Developers write their application to a more or less open specification and then upload their code into the cloud where the app is run magically somewhere, typically being able to scale up automagically as usage for the app grows. Examples are Mosso, Google App Engine, and Force.com. The service being sold is the machinery that funnels requests to an application and makes the application tick. Infrastructure in the cloud : this is the most general offering that Amazon has pioneered and where RightScale offers its management platform. Developers and system administrators obtain general compute, storage, queueing, and other resources and run their applications with the fewest limitations. This is the most powerful type of cloud in that virtually any application and any configuration that is fit for the internet can be mapped to this type of service. Of course it also requires more work on the part of the buyer, which is where RightScale comes in to help with set-up and automation.
• #13: Demand vs infrastructure Invites to a party, website accessible by the world How to deal with that A new server can be powered up in a matter of minutes and configured exactly the same as your existing one using a simple configuration tool. Similarly, if your demand falls off, you can turn these extra boxes off as easily as you turned them on. Cloud computing takes the infrastructure and scaling costs out of professional hosting.
• #14: I would personally change the image of the pope, I still don’t understand The big player bringing cloud hosting to the masses is Amazon Web Services (AWS), and its timing couldn't be better. Economically, we're living in uncertain times. When it comes to upgrading a 12-month hosting contract or trying to justify another capital expenditure in terms of new hardware, painful decisions need to be made. But with cloud computing, there's less need to worry. Because you pay for what you use, rather than having to buy upfront what you think you only might use, cloud hosting provides the ultimate pay-as-you go hosting solution. Rather than compromise on performance or scalability, you can just host on the cloud…
• #15: There are not many full blown GIS companies using the IaaS and SaaS together as a solution New Orleans Community Data Centre using application from WeoGeo that holds data on Amazon Web Services and uses google maps to visualise. Benefits – access from anyway. Hosting security was to put your server in a data centre, with managed security and support. This approach has proved sufficient for many, but it's as limiting as putting all your money in a bank. And as we've all become aware recently, having all of your savings in one bank is something to be discouraged – if it goes down, so does your business. Now imagine putting each one of your pounds into a different bank account. If you did, then should one of the banks fail, you'd carry on as normal. The same can be said for cloud hosting. Infrastrucutre is spread across the globe, see notes form Evernote on this
• #16: This is where you can talk about open data, open software; ESRI pay for a server you may use 20% of; how much value are you getting from your data sets. Paying for software that you dont use £ks for 20% of Mail Merge GIS lite; Buffering and point in polygons type of functionality We won’t do the high end ARC GIS Server. WE don’t envisage people always need these capabilities (like network analysis). Krieging (simlifying complex lines), Site location analysis; but if I want to see how
• #20: Lets say you have an excel spreadsheet with a list of locations that you are interested in, and you want to put these on a map.