WTF is cloud-tethered compute? We're not sure either, but it just made a hype cycle for the first time

Clouds have gone private, mutated into hybrids, gone virtual and/or private and attracted many other labels beside. And soon we’ll also be offered “cloud-tethered compute”, according the analyst outfit Gartner which has made this new term one of the items on its 2020 hype cycle for infrastructure strategies. For those of you …

[Pascal Monett]

cloud-tethered compute

The last step in transforming our powerful PCs and laptops into dumb terminals.

Welcome to the 1970s.

Next, there will be a flash of genius when somebody realizes that distributed computing would make things faster, and we'll go back to the 90s of computing.

Honestly, this industry needs to stop being defined by the kids that relearn everything every 20 years.

[Mike 137]

Re: cloud-tethered compute

"... the kids that relearn everything every 20 years"

and learn less well at each cycle. Whatever the buzz phrase technology, we can be sure the implementation will be more fragile and bug ridden each time it comes round.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: cloud-tethered compute

Looks to be a different thing "A cloud that runs on your premises, but is managed by a cloud operator."

So just outsourcing the system administrators jobs to someone in India. Waiting to read the first BOFH episode about it....

[Wellyboot]

Re: cloud-tethered compute

Does it stop working if the interweb uplink goes away?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: cloud-tethered compute

Everybody knows that if the internet goes down it's impossible to work!

[Maelstorm]

Re: cloud-tethered compute

In Soviet Russia, you don't go down on the internet, the internet goes down on you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: cloud-tethered compute

Cloud tethered compute (not computer) is certainly on the upswing in management's eyes.

That said, as ElReg readers know, it seems to fail more often than it works.

[Maelstorm]

Re: cloud-tethered compute

Us older folks remember computing in the 1980s and 1990s. Cloud computing is nothing more than a VM running on a remote server, and yet there is so much hype about it being the next great thing. Running a server on a VM is nice because you can move the VM to different hardware as the situation changes. So now we are seeing a resurgence of centralized computing. Instead of mainframes like the days of yore, it's now clusters running server software on virtual hosts. In the past 40 years, the names have changed, but the concepts remain the same. It's still a form a client/server computing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: cloud-tethered compute

I too remember computing in the 80s and 90s - A VM running on a server somewhere ain't cloud. Unless of course it is managed via APIs (cli, sdk or browser) ,and you only pay for it when it is running, can run it up anywhere globally (in minutes), can scale up or down, in or out without needing to wait 2 months for your outsourcer to raise a project, buy more hardware, charge you an arm and a leg even for unused capacity, etc, etc.

I'm no fan of Gartner's buzzword bingo, but seriously, if you think cloud is just a server running in someone else's data centre then you don't understand it and have missed the point big time.

Try cloud, you might learn something....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: cloud-tethered compute

With mainframes you paid already for the time you used. And your programs were "managed" with the available "APIs" of the time - even if meant someone with a white coat to moving your cards or tapes around. Of course you weren't able to move the code easily around because there was no network allowing it. The model was exactly the same. The fact now you have a browser in front of it doesn't change the model - only makes it easier to use.

Good luck anyway to move loads of data "anywhere globally" in minutes - even Amazon will send you a truck to move them. Nor you can move your data and their processing anywhere you like...

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, look forward to this term being trotted out by bone-headed slave-traders and its appearance on job descriptions written by hiring managers with the IQ of soup.

Not.

It pains me to think that someone at Gartner gets paid (no doubt very good money) to come up with this bullshit.

[TeeCee]

First person to spot an ad wanting 5+ years of experience in it wins teh internets.

[John Robson]

Not hard - anyone who has published virtual applications/desktops over the last few decades know exactly what this is... it never went away.

[MOH]

Seriously. Have any of Gartner's predictions ever happened?

[Wellyboot]

They predicted there would always be enough paying eejits to make this guff worth while.

[Anonymous Coward]

Predictions

Keep in mind these are predictions of popularity, not recommendations (which are part of their Magic Quadrant service). A popular meme is not necessarily a good meme.

We may not like cloud tethered compute but it's certainly a rising trend among company management.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah.....the data centre.....again.......

Quote: "Cloud-tethered compute – A cloud that runs on your premises, but is managed by a cloud operator."

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.......so the old fashioned "data centre"....but managed remotely by someone in <your_offshore_country_here>.

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Cheap? No one "on site"? Should work out really well..........until it doesn't!

[Pete4000uk]

A new one

I was thinking only the other day that there had not been many new buzz words recently.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cloud? Agile? DevOps?..........

So....where is it running?

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So....does anyone have a COMPLETE spec of what's running?

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So.....can the developers and the operations people agree about what's going on?

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Oh......."Operations" is someone in <your_offshore_country_here>......

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Ah.....this is progress....and I'm a dinosaur caught up in the past (when things actually worked!)

[Doctor Syntax]

“a process pattern in which the system and application infrastructure, once instantiated, is never updated in place”

AKA "If it ain't broke don't fix it"

[hoola]

It is all about revenue

This will simply evolve into a PC as a service that will not work without an Internet connection.

We are not far off that already, this is simply adding a bit of funky marketing and the word "Cloud" so that all the graduate management idiots can spout something that sounds cool.

My son was trying to fix something in Windows on his laptop and misguidedly ran the "Microsoft Troubleshooter". The sodding thing kept failing and coming up with a warning because he did not have a Microsoft Account. The problem was nothing to do with accounts or anything yet it still persisted in trying to force a Microsoft Login to be created as if this would solve a VSS issue.

It is only a matter of time before Windows simply will not function without an MS login. I suppose you can say the same for iOS and Android as they have always needed it to work.

[martinusher]

Re: It is all about revenue

Many sci-fi stories had variations on 'put a coin in the slot / swipe some kind of card / use a cloud service to make something mundane happen' plot line. Its typically at the start of the story and is a marker for dynstopia. Of course, it would never happen in real life. Or would it?

I was talking just yesterday with someone who was asking about whether he could tap into his "Ring" doorbell so he could put a sepaker in the house that would notify him when someone was at the door. Apparently he either didn't want to pay or couldn't afford the $20 a month 'subscription' needed to keep this crap working. I suggested one of those old school pushbuttons.....its not very high tech but they're only about $3 and you get a lifetime of service from it.

I can't imagine what's going through those marketing types' minds. They must live in an alternate reality.

[dcolpitts]

Cloud-tethered Compute - see HPE Greenlake offerings

We already have Cloud-tether Compute today. And it's called HPE Greenlake. The design, architecture, and installation of your entire on-prem compute infrastructure (aka Private Cloud) is managed by HPE, and you can also offload much of your day-to-day infrastructure management with optional support services from HPE.

I swear the world would be better off without the likes of Gartner and their buzzword bingo.

[TonyR]

40 Odd Years Mature

I seem to recall one John Gage, chief scientist and master geek at Sun Microsystems, saying something about, "The network is the computer.".

What has changed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 40 Odd Years Mature

What has changed?

There's more money to be made now?

[Anonymous Coward]

What has changed?

Sun no longer exists? Maybe, if it hired better geeks....

Anyway that was one of the plans Sun had with Java, remember the "Network PC" that should have been low-power Java machine offloading most of the work to remote Java application servers?

Just back then nobody was fool enough to be caught into the trap. Now, instead....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What has changed?

Part of the lack of interest back then was because of Sun, another part was Java.

That is, your average commodity PC buyer didn't really know who Sun was, and wasn't about to pay for one. And what's this "Java" thing?

Other folks knew Sun, either because they already had some and maybe liked them, or didn't care for them, and weren't about to buy them for PC duty. And you can keep that "Java" thing, thank you.

Nowdays the cloud vendors have learnt from the drug dealers ("1st taste is free"), and they market at the business types rather than the IT folk... successfully in many cases, because the IT folk are the target of alleged cost savings, and the business types love to claim how much money they're saving.

[Twanky]

Funding opex-capex balancing

Essentially cloud cost analysis and comparisons, to manage cloud costs and help to inform purchasing. Should get useful in no more than five years.

Or as my first bosses used to ask: 'You want to spend how much?? What do we get for that?'

Buzzword/bullshit bingo at its worst.