Comments on Bits or pieces?: Amazon vs Google

Hi Artur,First, good to hear you're coming over to...

2008-04-09T23:47:00.000+01:00

Hi Artur,

First, good to hear you're coming over to London for Web 2.0 Strategies.

As for EC2 at the hardware level (HaaS) and GAE at the framework level (FaaS), maybe I'm explaining myself badly, but this is not the point of the discussion.

The important point is that Google has provided a blueprint in the open SDK for their framework. OK, it is not their live environment, but it should provide a means to ensure compatibility between one provider and another. Map an alternative service to the SDK and you have the starting point for portability in this utility computing world.

Once competitive utility computing markets get started at any level - HaaS / FaaS or SaaS (as I used to call them) - they will spread and become the standards.

The essential point is that an open sourced environment (in this case the open SDK) can become the open standard for which portability is built around.

It doesn't matter what level of the stack, if it works it will spread.

I personally haven't seen any signs to make me believe that Amazon is ready to embrace that open world.

Just a note,You can't compare EC2 and Googles offe...

2008-04-09T23:17:00.000+01:00

Just a note,You can't compare EC2 and Googles offering, one is the raw abstraction of hardware and storage, the other is a app environment. (Except SimpleDB)

You could build something like what Google has on top of EC2 :).

I think there are room for both, but for different markets.

Hi James, I think we're agreeing through disagreei...

2008-04-09T19:21:00.000+01:00

Hi James,

I think we're agreeing through disagreeing.

I don't believe this is ready now for the enterprise prime time, it's a first step ... in a journey.

However, the potential, which maybe fifty steps down the line is to completely change the game of IT.

Fine, as far as it goes. However, I added a post ...

2008-04-09T18:33:00.000+01:00

Fine, as far as it goes. However, I added a post to my blog to describe why even an open market of Google-compatible delivery options won't make this that much more important to enterprise IT.

(Actually, I love this observation for web apps...and if Google decides to move forward with "offline processing support", the game may change down the road--way down the road.)