Fabric is also used to refer to PaaS: http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2008/11/14/cloud-types/ I suggest we drop the word 'fabric'. On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 5:37 PM, Sam Johnston <samj@samj.net> wrote:
On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:14 PM, Krishna Sankar (ksankar) <ksankar@cisco.com> wrote:
But then SaaS is Software over PaaS; PaaS is fabric over IaaS; IaaS is compute, storage and network. Isn't fabric the P is PaaS ? and in IaaS, we see raw compute/storage/network ?
If we want to maintain the Software-Platform-Infrastructure terminology hierarchy I am fine with that. Then we should switch the fabric and the Compute-Storage-Network.
[Ab]use of the term "fabric" to refer to software platforms like Azure is so far as I can tell a fairly recent trend (and one I'm relatively unconvinced by). Granted the contept (whereby many interconnected nodes, when viewed from a distance, appear to be a single coherent "fabric") could be applied to both hardware and software, but it is most often applied to low level, interconnected hardware such as SANs and InfiniBand... and servers:
What is fabric computing and how does it improve upon current server technology? The simplest way to think about it is the next-generation architecture for enterprise servers. Fabric computing combines powerful server capabilities and advanced networking features into a single server structure.
We do need something to refer to the underlying hardware/firmware but I'm even less convinced by proposed alternatives ("unified computing" being the most obvious example). Perhaps "Hardware Fabric" would clarify?
Sam