“云计算”是什么？

译者 解君

Eleanor Miller     | Oct. 28, 2011, 10:18 AM

  

作者：Eleanor Miller 

发布日期：2011年10月28日，上午10点28分

Everyone is talking about cloud computing. Forrester projects that the total market for cloud computing will be $241 billion by 2020.

       人们都在聊“云计算”，预测人士称，到2010年，云计算创造的市场总值将达到2亿4100万美元。

But what does cloud computing mean, exactly?

       但是云计算究竟是什么呢？

Cloud computing means computing can be used as a service rather than a product.

       云计算意味着可以把计算用作服务，而不是用作商品。

This has become possible because it's now cost-effective for companies to build huge data centers where computing and software can be provided remotely at massive scale and rented out, like a utility service.

       如果有一个大规模而且是租用的数据中心，利用它来提供计算和软件，就类似一个实用服务程序，从成本角度考虑，对很多公司是很划算的。所以，云计算的想法是合理的。

Large amounts of storage and processing power are now ubiquitous and cheap. Few of us generate our own electricity: instead we rely on the pooled resources of an electric grid, use what we need and pay by the meter. The same is now possible with computing.

       现在大规模的输电站很普遍而且收费也便宜。没有人自己发电，都是利用输电网络的存储资源，用多少自己决定，然后按计价器显示的金额付钱。现在，计算也可以像用电一样。

What does this mean, in practice?

       这意味着什么呢？云计算的实际作用是什么呢？

For consumers, the cloud plus the emergence of smart mobile devices like smartphones and tablets means that we are, in fact, moving to a "post-PC world." We'll still be using personal computers, but instead of each person having one central computer which they use for the vast majority of their computing needs, each person will have several devices (work computer, home computer, smartphone, tablet...) with their data and software synced between devices, through the cloud. Think of web-based email, which has been around since 1995: all your email is stored on servers around the world, and you can access it from wherever with whatever device, and have all your info. With the cloud, this is increasingly true of all the things we use computers for: productivity (Google Docs), file sharing (Dropbox), music (Spotify) and so on.

       对用户的意义：

       云计算，还有智能移动设备，比如智能手机和平板电脑的出现，意味着我们实际上进入了一个“后PC时代”。我们仍然使用个人电脑，但是每个人都会有多个设备（例如办公电脑，家用电脑，智能手机，平板电脑...），但是不会只用一台核心电脑进行绝大部分的计算工作，而是通过云计算，将不同设备间的数据和软件同步。回想一下电子邮件服务吧，还是在1995年流行起来的：你的邮件被存储到世界各地的服务器上，你可以随时随地看邮件，查看你的信息。通过云计算，以后我们在电脑上的工作都能逐渐以这种方式实现，比如现在已有的一些服务：高效的在线文字处理软件‘谷歌文档（Google Docs）’，方便的文件同步软件‘在线存储服务（Dropbox）’，合法的正版歌曲在线收听软件‘Spotify’，等等服务。云计算还意味着软件可以通过网络传递和使用，这将威胁桌面软件制造公司，比如微软公司。高效软件就是一个例子：目前，像‘谷歌文档’这样的在线应用在功能上还达不到像微软Office桌面软件那样的功能，但是我们相信将来是可以做到的。用经典书《创新者的困境》阐述的道理来看待云计算的话，尽管在线软件功能低一些，但是他们有决定性的优势，比如说免费使用，无处不在，而且还日趋完善。

For startups and technology companies, the cloud means a drastic increase in capital efficiency. It is now cheaper than ever to start a new service, and easier than ever to scale it. This is largely achieved thanks to Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud computing arm, which is growing like gangbusters (see chart above). In 1999 it cost $150,000 a month to run a web application in the then-nascent cloud; now the same application would now cost just $1,500 a month on Amazon. We pointed to Instagram, with 9 million users and half a dozen employees, as exemplary of this trend. When people talk about startup valuations rising, they should keep in mind that the cost structure (and addressable market) for web startups is now radically different from what it was only a few years ago.

  

        对新型网络公司和科技公司的意义：

       云计算意味着资本效率的大幅提高。现在开发一个新软件的成本比以前低了，软件升级也比以前容易了。这主要归功于亚马逊的云计算服务-‘亚马逊网络服务 （Amazon Web Services）’，业务数量飞速增长（看上图）。在1999年，那时候云计算还是新生事物，在上面运营一个网络应用，一个月的费用是15万美金；现在同样的一个应用在亚马逊上一个月只需要1500美金。以云计算的成功案例Instagram公司来说，它只需要6名员工却拥有900万个用户。云计算使网络公司的费用结构，在几年的时间里发生了变化，使网络公司蓬勃发展。

For large businesses, the cloud turns computing from a capital expense to an operating expense. There are technical challenges and security challenges for many large companies to moving to the cloud, but over time it should make managing and using computing resources a lot more efficient for large companies.  It also represents a large opportunity for enterprise software startups to displace incumbents with cloud-based solutions that are sold as a service. For example, after PeopleSoft, a maker of desktop software for human resources management was acquired by Oracle, the founders of the company launched Workday, which also does human resources management but is delivered from the cloud as a service. When we interviewed co-founder Aneel Bhusri, the company already had 250 large enterprise customers.

       对大公司的意义：

       云计算使运算成本从资本费用转向管理费用。对大公司来说，向云计算迁移的运程中有很有技术和安全方面的难题，但随着时间的推移，管理和使用计算资源的效率都会提高。对与开始踏入软件产业的大公司来说，把现有的产品转向基于云计算的解决方案，是一个很好的就会。举个例子，仁科公司(PeopleSoft)是制作人力资源管理桌面软件的软件公司，被甲骨文公司（Oracle）收购之后，仁科的创始人又创建了Workday公司，做起了基于云计算的人力资源管理软件。当我们采访创始人Aneel Bhusri的时候，Workday已经是拥有250个大企业客户的公司了。

Cloud computing also has critics, who note drawbacks:

       有专业的云计算评论员，下面是他们指出的一些缺点：

Security. You are, after all, handing your data to a third-party over the internet. And people are understandably paranoid about that.

       安全性：毕竟是把数据通过网络交给第三方，人们自然对安全性有些疑虑。

Reliability. If the cloud goes down (and there is no such thing as 100% uptime; Amazon Web Services, generally considered the gold standard, had devastating downtime earlier this year) then your apps go down. Cloud advocates say that the costs involved with the (admittedly rare) downtimes are much lower than the costs of desktop software, which can also be unreliable (bugs, crashes) and has expensive upgrades, unlike cloud software which is upgraded seamlessly.

       可靠性：如果云计算崩溃了，你的应用也就崩溃了。但不得不说，现在还没有能全部时间100%正常运行的事物，今年早些时候，被认为是黄金标准的‘亚马逊网络服务’也遇到了崩溃现象。倡导云计算的人说，崩溃并不常见，而且崩溃造成的损失，比桌面软件的成本低多了，桌面软件也会出现程序错误或者崩溃，也是不可靠的，还要付昂贵的升级费，云计算则是免费的动态升级。

Also, most cloud companies also charge more for spikes in usage, which may lead to unpredictable costs.

       未知性：许多提供云计算的公司向内存泄漏收取大量费用，也会导致不可预测的花费。

"Cloud computing" is a catch-all term and covers many industries and many different segments. What's more, because it has become a buzzword, many people describe themselves as "cloud computing" no matter how warranted that is.

       ‘云计算’是一个通用的说法，实际覆盖了很多产业和不同领域，也是时下的流行词，很有公司没有授权就标榜自己是云计算。

But despite real drawbacks and a bit of hype, cloud computing remains a fundamental, very important trend. It is, as The Economist put it, the world's "first global utility."

       尽管云计算有一些缺点和被炒得天花乱坠，它仍然是今后的潮流风向。经济学者称它为“第一个全球化实用程序”。

It's a new paradigm for computing which affects everyone, and with it come gargantuan business opportunities.

       云计算将成为影响人类运算方式的新范例，也将带来巨大的商业机遇。