10 ms·

Forget 'the Cloud'; 'the Fog' Is Tech's Future

50 points by webdisrupt 12y ago

JTxt 12y ago
The 'cloud' idea bothered me from the start. But not as much about bandwidth and latency, but a loss of control of private data and that the company and network become single points of failure. It's about control of my data; I have to give it up to to benefit from a computing service. Homomorphic encryption is an interesting thought: Allow my neighbors or a computing service to process my data without them able to see it. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption
pling 12y ago
My word that article triggered my bullshit detector instantly. Cloud, fog, internet of things, big data, smart, edge computing. Ugh.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  Looks like WSJ has mastered fog journalism.
- bitslayer 12y ago
  It is basically an ad for a new Cisco marketing term. "I guess we should go with the Cisco solution because they have that fog."
  - pling 12y ago
    It's a bad marketing term as well. Just makes me think of coughing Victorians...
- nkozyra 12y ago
  How is it the media is so incredibly incapable of even attempting to understand a concept so inornate and basic as that of "cloud computing?"
ama729 12y ago
> I'm as big a believer in the transformational power of cloud computing > as anyone you'll meet. Smartphones, which are constantly seeking and > retrieving data, don't make sense without the cloud, and any business > that isn't racing to push its data and software into someone else's data > center is, in my view, setting itself up for disruption by a competitor > who is. - A smartphone is useful even without internet. - My local restaurant wont get disrupted because it's not using Cloudfront. At first I though it was a parody (Seriously, "the fog"?), well apparently I wasn't wrong...
- cmiller1 12y ago
  >My local restaurant wont get disrupted because it's not using Cloudfront. To put it out there, I was in an unfamiliar city this weekend and when my friends and I wanted to order some food, simply for convenience: if they weren't on grubhub they were off our radar; so I'd say "the cloud" is even offering a competitive advantage for your local restaurants that use it vs those that don't.
  - stuaxo 12y ago
    Before the term cloud we still had websites ... the cloud term is a little foggy if you ask me.
    - ubercore 12y ago
      Before "the cloud" we had a lot of awful flash restaurant websites done by a local contractor with wildly varying quality, functionality, and no ability to order online. I'd say the "the cloud" (the pop-culture and general understanding of it, not specific things like Cloudfront) really has improved this area.
- amirmc 12y ago
  > "A smartphone is useful even without internet." In principle, I agree but that's not the way things are going. How many apps do you have that have to talk to (someone else's) backend service to be at all useful? For me I can think of Google Maps, Citymapper, Whatsapp and the weather app (just off the top of my head). All these are useless to me without a data connection.
thecolorblue 12y ago
The problem is bandwidth? I don't buy it.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
Not utility fog composed of nanobots; I don't care.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    You're missing the point, which was that it's a pun. "Fog computing"? Come on. The only damn thing that came to mind as a possible meaning of the phrase "fog computing" was "the fog is made of computers".
    - logicallee 12y ago
      yes, did miss the pun. (and your point.) Your pun is a good one, as is your point - neither came across well. You need to tweak the delivery :)
al2o3cr 12y ago
"That's what you want me to believe, you fks! I see through your fog! I don't talk to robots! I'm going to call Commissioner Duck!"
joncrocks 12y ago
Coming soon, 'the mist'.
- camus2 12y ago
  just trademarked "haze" computing! lol
josefresco 12y ago
Stopped reading/caring when I read "the fog" a term created by "Marketers at Cisco Systems Inc." Noting to see here, just more PR fluff.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
webmaven 12y ago
Also: http://imdb.com/rg/an_share/title/title/tt0080749/ http://imdb.com/rg/an_share/title/title/tt0080749/
girvo 12y ago
The fog? Computing on the computers themselves? Isn't that basically what we've already been doing since... well, literally since computers were invented? That said, I don't know if there is a snazzy marketing term, but offline-capable apps with proper syncing support is the best solution for most stuff I want to create and use. I have a super computer in my pocket, so yeah it's nice to have snappy stuff done there, but data kept nice and backed up (as well as dispersed across the rest of my devices) using the "cloud". Calling it "the Fog" is dumb, however.
amirmc 12y ago
For everyone slating this article, please try thinking of it from a different perspective (and look beyond the buzzwords). Here's my take. (paraphrasing) 'In the rush to 'the cloud' people are disovering that there are bottlenecks related to bandwidth to edge devices (phones etc) and this problem will only increase as more and more devices become conencted (cf Interent of everything). However, not all services/products need to constantly push data back and forth to a centralised place. There is enough processing power in many devices such that more processing can happen at the edge so why not build more applications this way? Cisco and IBM see merit in this approach and hope to capture part of a (presumabley nacscent) market by providing some kind of processing ability that is a little nearer the edge of the network, rather than huge datacentres.' Is that any better? My view on the article is that until developers can more easily build distributed applications, then we're stuck with the prevailing paradigm of large centralised services. I don't see how anything from Cisco or IBM changes anything other than having a slew of mini-datacentres that essentially do the same thing. What we really need are the means to create, deploy and maintain software in a more distributed manner. Having all the fancy smart sensors in my home talking to my hub is preferable to having them all talking to their individual silos. At least then, I can excersice some control of what's going on within my network and benefit from e.g. my high-speed wireless vs my much slower upstream bandwidth. FWIW I'm working on an open source toolstack to make building distributed systems a lot more stratightforward. Essentially, we want to get to a place where everyone can own their own piece of the cloud. Whether that ends up being called the 'fog' or 'dust cloud' or 'motes' is beside the point. You can read an overview at http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/ http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/
- rsync 12y ago
  "There is enough processing power in many devices such that more processing can happen at the edge so why not build more applications this way?" ... and thus spins the endless wheel of IT. You could find this exact same sentence in any number of trade journals going back every five years to 1970. Just replace "mainframe" with "cloud" and "client server model" with "fog". See you in another five years...
  - 12y ago
JunkDNA 12y ago
Like most of you, this article caused multiple PR-early warning detectors to fire in my head. It's unfortunate because there is a useful kernel to keep in mind here. If there's one thing you can bet on in computing, it's that technological trends are a pendulum that swings back and forth over time. The pendulum has been pegged on the "cloud" side for a long time. One thing I've learned over the years is that the pendulum changes direction pretty much at the precise moment you start thinking it's not going to. I think "the cloud" falls in that category right now. I don't really know what the swing away from cloud computing looks like, but I won't at all be surprised when it shows up.
- wmeredith 12y ago
  >> but I won't at all be surprised when it shows up. Then by your own logic, it's still a long way off.
mindcrime 12y ago
And, of course, anybody dealing with "the fog" needs a "fogbeam"[1]. :-) All joking aside, this seems like a weird term to try and coin. Isn't it just what people are mostly calling the "hybrid cloud" today? [1]: http://www.fogbeam.com http://www.fogbeam.com
bchjam 12y ago
I guess they got tired of calling it mesh networking

50 points by webdisrupt 12y ago

JTxt 12y ago

The 'cloud' idea bothered me from the start. But not as much about bandwidth and latency, but a loss of control of private data and that the company and network become single points of failure. It's about control of my data; I have to give it up to to benefit from a computing service. Homomorphic encryption is an interesting thought: Allow my neighbors or a computing service to process my data without them able to see it. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption

pling 12y ago

My word that article triggered my bullshit detector instantly. Cloud, fog, internet of things, big data, smart, edge computing. Ugh.

Spooky23 12y ago
Looks like WSJ has mastered fog journalism.
bitslayer 12y ago
It is basically an ad for a new Cisco marketing term. "I guess we should go with the Cisco solution because they have that fog."
- pling 12y ago
  It's a bad marketing term as well. Just makes me think of coughing Victorians...
nkozyra 12y ago
How is it the media is so incredibly incapable of even attempting to understand a concept so inornate and basic as that of "cloud computing?"

ama729 12y ago

> I'm as big a believer in the transformational power of cloud computing > as anyone you'll meet. Smartphones, which are constantly seeking and > retrieving data, don't make sense without the cloud, and any business > that isn't racing to push its data and software into someone else's data > center is, in my view, setting itself up for disruption by a competitor > who is. - A smartphone is useful even without internet. - My local restaurant wont get disrupted because it's not using Cloudfront. At first I though it was a parody (Seriously, "the fog"?), well apparently I wasn't wrong...

cmiller1 12y ago
>My local restaurant wont get disrupted because it's not using Cloudfront. To put it out there, I was in an unfamiliar city this weekend and when my friends and I wanted to order some food, simply for convenience: if they weren't on grubhub they were off our radar; so I'd say "the cloud" is even offering a competitive advantage for your local restaurants that use it vs those that don't.
- stuaxo 12y ago
  Before the term cloud we still had websites ... the cloud term is a little foggy if you ask me.
  - ubercore 12y ago
    Before "the cloud" we had a lot of awful flash restaurant websites done by a local contractor with wildly varying quality, functionality, and no ability to order online. I'd say the "the cloud" (the pop-culture and general understanding of it, not specific things like Cloudfront) really has improved this area.
amirmc 12y ago
> "A smartphone is useful even without internet." In principle, I agree but that's not the way things are going. How many apps do you have that have to talk to (someone else's) backend service to be at all useful? For me I can think of Google Maps, Citymapper, Whatsapp and the weather app (just off the top of my head). All these are useless to me without a data connection.

thecolorblue 12y ago

The problem is bandwidth? I don't buy it.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

Not utility fog composed of nanobots; I don't care.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  You're missing the point, which was that it's a pun. "Fog computing"? Come on. The only damn thing that came to mind as a possible meaning of the phrase "fog computing" was "the fog is made of computers".
  - logicallee 12y ago
    yes, did miss the pun. (and your point.) Your pun is a good one, as is your point - neither came across well. You need to tweak the delivery :)

al2o3cr 12y ago

"That's what you want me to believe, you fks! I see through your fog! I don't talk to robots! I'm going to call Commissioner Duck!"

joncrocks 12y ago

Coming soon, 'the mist'.

camus2 12y ago
just trademarked "haze" computing! lol

josefresco 12y ago

Stopped reading/caring when I read "the fog" a term created by "Marketers at Cisco Systems Inc." Noting to see here, just more PR fluff.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

webmaven 12y ago

Also: http://imdb.com/rg/an_share/title/title/tt0080749/ http://imdb.com/rg/an_share/title/title/tt0080749/

girvo 12y ago

The fog? Computing on the computers themselves? Isn't that basically what we've already been doing since... well, literally since computers were invented? That said, I don't know if there is a snazzy marketing term, but offline-capable apps with proper syncing support is the best solution for most stuff I want to create and use. I have a super computer in my pocket, so yeah it's nice to have snappy stuff done there, but data kept nice and backed up (as well as dispersed across the rest of my devices) using the "cloud". Calling it "the Fog" is dumb, however.

amirmc 12y ago

For everyone slating this article, please try thinking of it from a different perspective (and look beyond the buzzwords). Here's my take. (paraphrasing) 'In the rush to 'the cloud' people are disovering that there are bottlenecks related to bandwidth to edge devices (phones etc) and this problem will only increase as more and more devices become conencted (cf Interent of everything). However, not all services/products need to constantly push data back and forth to a centralised place. There is enough processing power in many devices such that more processing can happen at the edge so why not build more applications this way? Cisco and IBM see merit in this approach and hope to capture part of a (presumabley nacscent) market by providing some kind of processing ability that is a little nearer the edge of the network, rather than huge datacentres.' Is that any better? My view on the article is that until developers can more easily build distributed applications, then we're stuck with the prevailing paradigm of large centralised services. I don't see how anything from Cisco or IBM changes anything other than having a slew of mini-datacentres that essentially do the same thing. What we really need are the means to create, deploy and maintain software in a more distributed manner. Having all the fancy smart sensors in my home talking to my hub is preferable to having them all talking to their individual silos. At least then, I can excersice some control of what's going on within my network and benefit from e.g. my high-speed wireless vs my much slower upstream bandwidth. FWIW I'm working on an open source toolstack to make building distributed systems a lot more stratightforward. Essentially, we want to get to a place where everyone can own their own piece of the cloud. Whether that ends up being called the 'fog' or 'dust cloud' or 'motes' is beside the point. You can read an overview at http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/ http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/

rsync 12y ago
"There is enough processing power in many devices such that more processing can happen at the edge so why not build more applications this way?" ... and thus spins the endless wheel of IT. You could find this exact same sentence in any number of trade journals going back every five years to 1970. Just replace "mainframe" with "cloud" and "client server model" with "fog". See you in another five years...
- 12y ago

JunkDNA 12y ago

Like most of you, this article caused multiple PR-early warning detectors to fire in my head. It's unfortunate because there is a useful kernel to keep in mind here. If there's one thing you can bet on in computing, it's that technological trends are a pendulum that swings back and forth over time. The pendulum has been pegged on the "cloud" side for a long time. One thing I've learned over the years is that the pendulum changes direction pretty much at the precise moment you start thinking it's not going to. I think "the cloud" falls in that category right now. I don't really know what the swing away from cloud computing looks like, but I won't at all be surprised when it shows up.

wmeredith 12y ago
>> but I won't at all be surprised when it shows up. Then by your own logic, it's still a long way off.

mindcrime 12y ago

And, of course, anybody dealing with "the fog" needs a "fogbeam"[1]. :-) All joking aside, this seems like a weird term to try and coin. Isn't it just what people are mostly calling the "hybrid cloud" today? [1]: http://www.fogbeam.com http://www.fogbeam.com

bchjam 12y ago

I guess they got tired of calling it mesh networking