Is Facebook a cloud?

Facebook have their own infrastructure rather than using a third party cloud provider. That said, they have the scale to "do" cloud properly with their own resources. For the purposes of a functional discussion about what cloud is, yes, Facebook are cloud

To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends what the meaning of "is" is.

Certainly, Facebook is a large Internet-based application for social networking. It's the number two site on the Internet, behind Google (so says Alexa: http://www.alexa.com/). But is it a cloud?

I think the best you can say is "sort of," and I fall slightly into the "no" camp.

Facebook uses a lot of large-scale web application technologies. It may run some of its processing on external clouds. It may run its internal datacenters using a cloud operating model. So, it's probably safe to say that Facebook is a *user* of clouds. But merely being a user of clouds doesn't make you a cloud yourself.

Whether Facebook *IS* a cloud, that's a judgement call. The company basically runs a single, large Internet application. Users interact with that application through the Facebook UI, implemented on a number of devices (web, mobile, etc.). At best, you could say that Facebook is a SaaS-based social networking application, but then the question is what makes something a SaaS application? Is Google a SaaS application for Internet search? Is Mapquest a SaaS application for mapping and directions? Is Yahoo Finance a SaaS application for financial news? Is BarnsAndNoble.com a SaaS application for buying books? (Note that I specifically avoided Amazon.com because given Amazon's generic storefront capabilities for multiple other retailers, one could realistically argue that Amazon has become a SaaS application for ecommerce storefronts.)

If those sites are all SaaS applications, then what's the difference between a SaaS application and a plain ol' web site (old school)?

IMO, if Facebook is a cloud, then so is my cousin's web site; it's just a question of scale. So, put me in the "no" camp.

What is a cloud?

Facebook has built a highly automated, highly scalable, highly available distributed system providing on demand services to users and essentially provides a platform as a service internally to developers.

Any organization supporting a massive web infrastructure is either automated to the point of being 'cloudy' or will struggle to compete against those who do. The difference in operational overhead alone will be significant, but there will also be a negative impacts in the quality of service as well.

Absolutely.

They have one of the largest, if not the largest, implementation of Hadoop. Hadoop is open source software that supports distributed computing based on MapReduce (custom software developed by Google). Facebook also developed and then open sourced Cassandra a distributed database system (modeled after BigTable - custom software also developed at Google).

Facebook's multi-tenant public cloud hosts first and foremost social networking profiles. It also provides the largest photo hosting service in the world. Facebook also provides SaaS applications for advertisers and businesses. The messaging and chat services are SaaS as are the ability to share updates, links, videos, events, contact information etc.

This is a great question Lori, and it brings out the nature of the marketing-hype beast we are dealing with these days. As the IBM commercial says: "to the cloud!"

Facebook is not a cloud. It's not SaaS. It's a social networking application. Just like the Bank of Amercia web site that provides access to my checking account. I log on to it and it provides a service. Plain and simple.

But wait. Facebook provides a platform for others to provide services. (Farmville... yuck...). So does that make it a "cloud"? Well, maybe so. Not too sure anymore.

Salesforce.com - is it a cloud? Again, no IMO. It's a SaaS platform that I rent on an as-needed basis. What about force.com? Yes, it provides cloud services.

I think you can see the dilemma this creates. We get caught up in nuances, and this creates great marketing and sales opportunities. Let's look at the Gartner definition for cloud computing: "A style of computing where scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to customers using Internet technologies.” Their definition tends to narrow it down to more of an IT flavor. I can go buy compute cycles and storage from somebody else to reduce my costs and improve my IT responsiveness.

Let's look at one last example - Dropbox. To me, it's a pretty good example of a cloud service. Could I build my own version of dropbox? Yes. Would it scale? Maybe. Would it be easily accessible by a large community? Probably not. Would I have to ensure that I have sufficient resources (capacity planning) and pay the upfront costs? Yes. Would it be economically feasible for me to provide the service? No. These are the questions that lead to defining and choosing "cloud" services.

So back to the original question - is Facebook a cloud? The answer is no.

Christopher, if Facebook exposes IaaS and PaaS services (not just APIs!) to partners, then yes, I would consider it a cloud. I still don't think the basic Facebook application is a cloud in and of itself, but if they're operating as a IaaS/PaaS cloud to external parties, that certainly qualifies.

Like Robert, I'm a little concerned that we're starting to call any web-based application a "cloud," mostly to meet the PR hype-cycle demand of looking cool.

To answer this question, one needs to apply a cloud worthy test.
1). Does Facebook scale to handle busy times? A capacity on demand model.
2). Are they a SaaS?
3). If a SaaS, how are they Platformed, IaaS or PaaS?.

Only Facebook can answer these questions. I think though that they are cloud ready.

Dave,

I think it comes down to providing services that dictates if we're discussing applications (SaaS) or "a plain ol' web site."

There is a big difference between a site and a service.

Is Google.com SaaS? Absolutely.

Authentication, location aware, custom date ranges, search by content type, personal search history, custom search results based on social media profiles, multi-language support.

If your cousin's web site can do that or securely host hundreds of millions of pictures in a multi-tenant environment, then I'd agree, it is SaaS and could be a cloud as well. "Just a question of scale" is exactly right.

Scale is part of the answer. An application should also be able to scale up or down with ease. Flexibility and ease of control are key compenents of cloud worthy apps. Traditional IT services can be considered cloud worthy if they can pass these tests. Otherwise no, they need to gain internal or external flexibility

I have seen a lot of companies claim flexibility, but in practice, no they were not very flexible. They wanted to be but $$$'s usually got in the way. Now the $$$ barrier needs to be reexamined in light of these new cloud hosting services provided by the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and others.

Savvy companies will make the right decisions on how to move their IT resources forward to support LOB functions.

Facebook is an application. If Facebook has decided to leverage a cloud architecture to ensure high-availability and performance, that's a hidden factor from us, the user. Facebook is not providing a service that requires provisioning or elasticity. It does enable authentication-as-a-service for applications. In total, however, I do not consider Facebook a cloud.