The Opposite of Batch

We of the PC revolution like to think that the opposite of big, hulking mainframes are the nimble and friendly personal computers of our trade. Mainframes are expensive, hard to program, hard to use, and come with bureaucracies and rules. Personal computers, in contrast, are affordable, easy to program, easy to use, and one is free to do what one will with the PC -- the only rules are the ones we impose upon ourselves.

Yet mainframes and personal computers have one element in common: Both have fixed resources. The processor, the memory, the disk for storage... all are of fixed capacity. (Changeable only by taking the entire system off-line and adding or removing components.)

Mainframes are used by many people, and the resources must be allocated to the different users. The batch systems used by large mainframes are a means of allocating resources efficiently (at least from the perspective of the hardware). Users must wait their turn, submit their request, and wait for the results. The notion of batch is necessary because there are more requests than computing resources.

Personal computers provide interactive programs by providing more computing resources than a single person requires. The user can start jobs (programs) whenever he wants, because there is always spare capacity. The processor is fast enough, the memory is large enough, and the disk is also large enough.

But personal computers still offer fixed capacity. We rarely notice it, since we rarely bump up against the limits. (Although when we do, we often become irritated. Also, our personal systems perform poorly when they require more resources than available. Try to boot a Windows PC with a completely full hard disk.)

The true opposite of batch is not interactive, but flexible resources -- resources that can change as we need them. Such a design is provided by cloud computing. With cloud computing, we can increase or decrease the number of processors, the number of web server instances, the memory, our data store -- all of our resources -- without taking the system off-line. Our computing platform becomes elastic, expanding or contracting to meet our needs, rather than our needs adjusting to fit the fixed-size platform. Perhaps a better name for cloud computing would have been "balloon computing", since our resources can grow or shrink like a balloon.

This inversion of shape -- the system conforms to our needs, not our needs to the system -- is the revolutionary change offered by cloud computing. It will allow us to think of computing in different ways, to design new types of systems. We will have less thought of hardware constraints and more thought for problem design and business constraints. Cloud computing will free us from the drudgery of system design for hardware -- and let us pick up the drudgery of system design for business logic.

With cloud computing, IT becomes a better partner for the business. IT can enable faster business processes, more efficient supply chains, and better market predictions.