Please download the latest version of the Flash Player from Adobe.com

Cloud Computing & You

January 19, 2009 11:40 AM

I've heard some inclings that CFers may be interested in cloud deployments for their applications. I'd like to understand a bit more about your plans. Please help by filling out a very short survey on cloud computing (2-10 questions)

Click Here to take survey

This survey is open until Friday the 23th so please get your responses in today.

Much appreciated.

If you're not a search engine, you should install Flash.

13 |

| 3200 Views

Comments (Comment Moderation is enabled. Your comment will not appear until approved.) | Add Comment

	what exactly is cloud computing? and not the o'reilly definition... is it just a hosted database?
	Posted By greg \| 1/19/09 1:29 PM

Kristen - would it possible to add a comments section? I feel some of the q/a need some clarification (if you are planning on reading a comments section that is!). For example, the cost model - most of the options sound interesting, but at this time, it would be impossible to do a cost benefit analysis without knowing more about the variables involved. So, I would hate for Adobe to make a decision based on the answers in this survey (the mob is fickle)

Cheers,

David

Posted By David | 1/19/09 1:56 PM

Thanks for the ability to comment, Kristen. Please do not take all responses at face value, because as David points out, we are still trying to figure out the cost/benefit analysis.

I can say that we will migrate to cloud-based services and we are hoping that the CF licensing allows us to stay with CF. Please contact us if you would like to discuss more. We have a marketing profile with Adobe that has all of our contact information.

Posted By Paul Carney | 1/19/09 3:39 PM

@David, great suggestion. We added an open ended section and I believe you can log back in to fill it out.

@Paul - you remind me that I had intended to put a follow up section in the survey for if/when we want to do more qualitative research later. We added a contact question so that people can let us know how to contact them if desired. It's great to know you are one of them. Thank you.

@Greg - cloud computing is another deployment model for web applications. Before cloud, people could either host their applications internally in their organizations on their own hardware with their own team to manage the apps and infrastructure and that org owns all the hardware in addition to the software associated with the apps. Or they could go to a hosting company who would manage and own the hardware, software and environment. Cloud offers a 3rd option, for individuals to upload their applications to a virtual environment and chose how much virtual hardware etc they want to manage with it, so that they can scale their applications up or down. Some find that having this scaling option helps them manage their costs since they are only using what they need and can change it as needed. This depends on a lot of factors and is debated by some. With the three models are three different economic models as well. I could go on... but here’s my high level take for now.

Posted By Kristen Schofield | 1/19/09 4:35 PM

	Just a quick note on the survey - If you add your details to be contacted, you are required to put in a State. The only states listed are US states. So you now have an a record in of me who apparently lives in Arkansas ;o) while simultaneously living in Australia.
	Posted By Mark Mandel \| 1/19/09 5:07 PM

	Yes, and I apparently live in Alabama whilst simultaneously living in London. :-/
	Posted By Adam Cameron \| 1/19/09 7:09 PM

@kristen...
wow... that's not even close to my definition of cloud computing. I'm glad I read yours. Mine is like google docs.. or gmail... or evernote... the server... and the data... is in the cloud.. so users can access from any device anywhere. So, I could work on a doc from the office on my PC... then go home and continue to edit it on my mac.... and in the morning, when I'm on the train to work, then maybe I'd tweak it a bit more with my iphone or blackberry.
I view 'cloud computing' as the clean separation of client location and device from applicatoin location and device.
am I wrong here??

Posted By ron | 1/19/09 7:28 PM

Cloud computing can mean a lot of things, but what it usually means today from a practical perspective is a virtual hosting environment, the most popular being Amazon Web Services.

If you are not familiar with these acronyms yet, I recommend getting up to speed immediately:

Amazon AMI - Amazon Machine Image
Amazon EC2 - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
Amazon S3 - Amazon Simple Storage Service
Amazon SimpleDB
Amazon Mechanical Turk - On-Demand Workforce

Details: http://aws.amazon.com/resources/

I recommend creating an account and setting up some sample apps:

http://aws.amazon.com/

There is a great ColdFusion-based console that can help you get up and running quickly here:
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/ent...

KRISTEN - Adobe/ColdFusion needs to be *MUCH* more involved with Amazon Web Services (formal partnership) to provide Amazon Machine Images, software licensing arrangements, sample apps, etc. There is plenty for PHP, Java, .NET, Ruby, Python, etc., but ColdFusion is not well represented. The same is true with most development environments like Facebook apps, Open Social, iPhone apps, etc.

When will Adobe/ColdFusion commit to formally supporting these development communities where a significant amount of leading-edge development is happening? It's a shame when the choice is usually a 75% out-of-the-box solution with any non-CF development environment vs. start-from-scratch with ColdFusion.

Ben Forta and Raymond Camden can't be expected to do everything! How about a dedicated Adobe CF Team that is focused on making sure there are robust sample apps and development tools for the major development environments like AWS, Facebook, etc. Adobe should be very focused on making sure it is as easy as possible to deploy CF in these environments -- AT LEAST as easy as the other languages, if not more so.

Posted By Adam Fairbanks | 1/20/09 6:54 AM

	I have tried several times in the last 30 minutes to complete the survey, but the Survey Monkey site keeps giving me the following error message before the survey even starts: Woops! It looks like we've encountered an error. Sorry! If you would like to try that page again, please click here. If you need some further assistance, please contact us!
	Posted By Troy L Allen Sr \| 1/20/09 9:27 AM

Hi all!

Wanted to take a min to introduce myself and respond to a few of the comments on the post. I'm Alison Huselid and I've been working with Kristen @ Adobe over the last few months on ColdFusion activities including the subject of this post. Thanks again for taking the time to fill out the survey and provide your feedback!

@ Mark & Adam - thanks for letting us know about the contact info issue. It has been fixed to not require state or zip code.

@Troy - Survey Monkey was experiencing performance issues this morning. They have since been corrected and you should be able to access the survey now.

Posted By Alison Huselid | 1/20/09 11:28 AM

	Kristen, Thanks for posting this, I think Cloud Computing is becoming very important in the future, both in my company and the web dev world. It's encouraging to hear Adobe is thinking about it, but as someone said....move fast!
	Posted By Jay \| 1/20/09 12:41 PM

	Address 2 for the last survey question should not be required...
	Posted By Nathan Miller \| 1/20/09 1:07 PM

I missed the survey opportunity, but I wanted to just say that it was something that we were exploring this week for a new project. Any additional info about Adobe's licensing policy and support around this would be helpful so that we can evaluate if this is a viable option. I think that it may be a good fit in this case as we are looking for a highly scalable/available environment, but I am unclear as to how forecast adding new server instances on demand would impact the CF licensing.

I also just want to echo Adam's comments a bit. We, like many of us in this community are CF loyalists. We lost a deal just this week over the mis-perception of CF by an established IT dept. I tried to get them to drink the "blue" Kool-Aid, but they weren't having it. We get it, we believe, we lobby and lecture on the merits of CF, but often I feel there is a frustration because Adobe hasn't caught up to where we want to go. I do recognize that much has changed and for the better, but I want to encourage the CF team at Adobe to redouble the effort and push the boundaries. I promise you there is a lot of opportunity dramatically expand the CF server base out there but Adobe needs to be out in front of it. The Flash platform is driving new demand for our services, and CF is the perfect engine to drive it. We want to see CF as an equal option everywhere that people are running PHP, .Net, etc. Perhaps the introduction of Bolt as a paid CF development tool can offset a reduction in the cost of the server license, thereby taking that argument off the table? (a guy can dream...)

/soapbox =)

Posted By Aaron | 4/24/09 10:46 AM

All site content © Kristen Webb Schofield 2010
BlogCFC was created by Raymond Camden. This blog is running version 5.9. Contact Blog Owner