Cloud computing = mainframe rehash?

Andi Baritchi, who is listed as being a senior security consultant for a Fortune 100 company, recently wrote that cloud computing is the completion of a loop back to the mainframe.

How so? It takes the computing power back out of the hands of consumers and puts it back into the hands of the internal IT employees and third-party vendors. Take a look:

Since history does tend to repeat itself cyclically, I see this whole cloud computing movement as nothing more than a reincarnation of the classic mainframe client-server model. People want painless access to their data and applications from wherever they are, from whatever electronic gizmo they happen to be using. Sometimes we’re on a computer. A laptop. A desktop. A smartphone. A smartTV. A smartfridge. A smartcar…?

There has been a lot of talk about cloud computing being like utility computing, or grid computing, or other types of recent client-based computing infrastructures. Baritchi is saying here that it goes back even further, to the days of dumb terminals and mainframes.

According to Baritchi, the vendors out there that are doing the best job of it are Apple with the iPhone, and Google with Android. Either way, he’s excited about the reversion:

As a side note, this is a very exciting time for me being a security and privacy guy. This feverish movement back to client server to the cloud will see many security lapses. It’s gonna be a fun ride.