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 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabric_computing>" 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<http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/f/fabric.html>to low level, interconnected hardware such as SANs and InfiniBand... and servers<http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/community/features/interviews/blog/fabric-computing/?cs=22018> : *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