GIS in the cloud
Brian Timoney (@briantimoney) has a very nice piece on GIS and the cloud in Directions magazine. He makes a compelling argument that 2010 will be the year when GIS will start migrating to the cloud in earnest.
Could be.
Local government being my main market, I wonder how likely local government decision-makers will be to embrace the cloud. Owning your own IT infrastructure definitely “feels” more secure. Will the lower price of a cloud solution be enough to offset the perceived unease of storing sensitive data “out there?”
Posted by Atanas Entchev at 2/18/2010 5:23 PM 
Categories: Data,GeoCloud,Cloud,Business,GIS,ENTCHEV,2010,Technology,IT
Tags: Data GeoCloud Cloud Business GIS ENTCHEV 2010 Technology IT
Categories: Data,GeoCloud,Cloud,Business,GIS,ENTCHEV,2010,Technology,IT
Tags: Data GeoCloud Cloud Business GIS ENTCHEV 2010 Technology IT
Cloud is not going to host our GIS, not for a while. In our medium size municipality here in NJ we have SQL data scatterred amongst multiple servers. This data is managed by several disparate systems than seem to resist all attempts to inter-link. Our GIS makes a bold attempt and takes lots of plumbing to make it work. Figuring out how to migrate that to the cloud would not be a simple task. Keeping it current while in the cloud is a whole other challenge.
Clearly virtualization is the segway into cloud computing. Perhaps when we are all virtualized then we could "just" move the VM into a cloud space and eliminate our resource costs associated with data center opeations. I for one embrace such a concept and am working to keep us on this path. Will it happen in 2010, no way. Very limited funding is just part of the problem.
Governing bodies simply don't associate any value (cost or resource savings) with GIS and see it as a resource drain. This is a much harder issue to address; especially when funding is so limited.
Our town will not consider cloud computing in 2010.
Tom
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Since Google just took Los Angeles from Microsoft I would say its coming faster then you think.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/10/city-council-votes-to-adopt-google-email-system-for-30000-city-employees.html
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Thank you, Tom and Donny V, for your comments.
I received two more comments by email from two New Jersey municipal GIS implementers. One suggested virtualization as an interim step, just like Tom. The other sided with Brian Timoney's comment about reaching a comfort level where "it just works."
I think that for a major paradigm shift like that to be embraced, it *must feel right*, in addition to working right.
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Interesting concept, although I would be concerned of the 'ownership' of the data. I manage a one-man GIS for a Municipality and our data is hosted on a third party site, although we demanded that we own the data, and simply provide the host a copy of our database, updated monthly. This gets us around the cost of a GIS server and software. I would have to read more into the cloud technology to form a better opinion.
I would also be concerned, as Antanas pointed out, of how the data is utilized. Parcel lines are not survey tolerant lot lines, and it seems no matter how many disclaimers you can post to a website...some people just don't understand what they're viewing.
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The question is really not whether to use cloud architecture or not. The question is when does it make sense for us to move in to cloud architecture?
Security is an issue whether your data are local or some where else (e.g., PCII). The same will also hold true for bandwidth (e.g, Thin Client terminal or Thick Client workstation). Will your network and/or wide area network support the necessary transfer rates?
A better question might be; do I use a private or public cloud and where is it located? Then ask yourself what operating system must it run on (e.g., mixed environment- Windows Server running ESRI and Linux Tomcat web server)?
This will impact your architecture dramatically. Are you running ESRI? Have they ported to the cloud (e.g., "Windows Cloud-Azure platform”, “Ubuntu Cloud”)?
Are you using a mixed architecture? You should note that licensing schemas vary on platforms (per processor, # of virtual servers per physical server/processor etc- see http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/virtualization.aspx ).
For that matter what is a cloud (please see Simon Wardley’s Video: Cloud Computing - Why IT Matters - OSCON, July 2009 http://www.cloudbook.net/simon-wardley ).
Perhaps your cloud takes the form of localized virtualization with a SAN/NAS? Perhaps it is more in the ether and/or hosted somewhere?
In either case we should become more familiar with it. Why not try building a private cloud with some old PCs? Download Ubuntu Cloud and run Tomcat -http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud/private.
For virtualization try ESXi on supported hardware - http://download3.vmware.com/demos/esxi/VMware_ESXi.html (note: watch out for drivers).
I am very interested to hear about your experiences with these. Please post back if you give these a try.
Ray
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Scott: Data quality and accuracy are always an issue, and will continue to be. I am very pleased that Mike Popoloski, PLS, has joined me as a blogger, to address these issues precisely.
Raymond: Thank you for a treasure trove of information. I will look into all of these. As far as ESRI's cloud solution goes, they just announced at the FedUC that ArcGIS 10 is "cloud-ready" (whatever that means) and demonstrated it with Amazon's EC2. Only available to ELA subscribers.
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