The Pony Express and The Cloud, Really!

Cloud Computing is a big deal.  Microsoft, Google, Amazon and now Apple are pushing their Cloud services out to eager, hungry customers looking for better ways to manage their technical processes.  Terms like SaaS, PaaS and IaaS are the new buzz-acronyms we’re now hearing at the trade shows. 

Sure, the Cloud is a great way to off-load some of the resources in your datacenter.  Let someone else run your servers, manage your apps’ lifecycles or provide remote software solutions for you. As a concept, Cloud Computing could save your company lots of money.

But what about IT techs?  How does “The Cloud” affect them? 

First, a little history…

In the early 1860s, the Pony Express was an innovation dreamt up by somebody that wanted to capitalize on delivering messaging services to the ever-expanding American West.  You could send a letter from New York to San Francisco in—a then remarkably fast—10 days.  Riders, like a young William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, rode across the land delivering mail on horseback to an ever-expanding population in the flourishing west. 

Technology-wise:  Not much going on here.

There were probably advances in things like saddle designs, knowing which horses worked best under certain conditions and recognizing less than obvious signs of potential robbers and native unrest.  Still, during its time, the Pony Express was the best way to send and receive news and information across the United States.  Better technology, however, wasn’t too far behind. 

The first Transcontinental Telegraph popped up in late 1861.  A faster, almost instantaneous, method of communication put the Pony Express out of business just days after the completion of the last telegraph line.  It was a short heyday for the riders of the Express, as society moved forward. And, much like our recent past, folks in the Pony Express had to find new jobs.

Cloud computing—specifically public Cloud offerings like Microsoft’s Windows Azure, Google’s App Engine and Amazon’s Web Services—all provide virtual workspaces where customers can develop, build and run applications without investing in hardware.  The responsibility of having to manage physical upgrades, firmware updates, OS patching and system monitoring are now in the hands of these big corporate datacenters.