When children look up at clouds they imagine all kinds of shapes – animals, people or planets. When computer scientists think of clouds, they conjure up something that may look like the data centre of the future.
Cloud computing is essentially a large-scale distributed computing system that taps into the vast resources of the Internet. Individual PCs access the “cloud” of data rather than their own data centre and rent products or services such as extra storage space or applications from companies like Amazon.com or Google.
Some observers believe businesses will eventually run no servers of their own, but merely rent access to a larger vendor’s cloud of computer resources. Here’s what you need to know about this trend and how it might affect your business:
The rationale
“Today, clients build and run extremely complex, underutilized and unsustainable scale-out environments,” writes Will Runyon on the data centre blog TheRaisedFloor.typepad.com. “The need for cloud computing is fuelled by dramatic growth in connected devices, real-time data streams, the adoption of service-oriented architectures and Web 2.0 applications such as search, open collaboration, social networking and mobile commerce.”
The potential pitfall
Although vendors talk as though there is only one Internet cloud, each vendor will be running its own set of data centres that customers can use to access Internet-based information and resources, which may complicate matters, notes Bob Warfield on the SmoothSpan.wordpress.com blog. Companies may want to ask, for example, whether their vendor’s cloud covers all the geographies their employees work in. “Get ready for a lot of complexity and choice to be injected to the cloud computing picture,” he writes.
Don’t choose any cloud
Nicholas Carr recently commented on the possibility of “vertical clouds” that offer special resources or services to customers with specific needs. According to Mr. Carr, vertical clouds would provide “a possible means of addressing issues of information security crucial to industries such as health care and financial services. “It might provide a regulatory stepping stone between private systems and a shared grid … vertical offerings would also mak
When children look up at clouds they imagine all kinds of shapes – animals, people or planets. When computer scientists think of clouds, they conjure up something that may look like the data centre of the future.
Cloud computing is essentially a large-scale distributed computing system that taps into the vast resources of the Internet. Individual PCs access the “cloud” of data rather than their own data centre and rent products or services such as extra storage space or applications from companies like Amazon.com or Google.
Some observers believe businesses will eventually run no servers of their own, but merely rent access to a larger vendor’s cloud of computer resources. Here’s what you need to know about this trend and how it might affect your business:
The rationale
“Today, clients build and run extremely complex, underutilized and unsustainable scale-out environments,” writes Will Runyon on the data centre blog TheRaisedFloor.typepad.com. “The need for cloud computing is fuelled by dramatic growth in connected devices, real-time data streams, the adoption of service-oriented architectures and Web 2.0 applications such as search, open collaboration, social networking and mobile commerce.”
The potential pitfall
Although vendors talk as though there is only one Internet cloud, each vendor will be running its own set of data centres that customers can use to access Internet-based information and resources, which may complicate matters, notes Bob Warfield on the SmoothSpan.wordpress.com blog. Companies may want to ask, for example, whether their vendor’s cloud covers all the geographies their employees work in. “Get ready for a lot of complexity and choice to be injected to the cloud computing picture,” he writes.
Don’t choose any cloud
Nicholas Carr recently commented on the possibility of “vertical clouds” that offer special resources or services to customers with specific needs. According to Mr. Carr, vertical clouds would provide “a possible means of addressing issues of information security crucial to industries such as health care and financial services. “It might provide a regulatory stepping stone between private systems and a shared grid … vertical offerings would also make sense for industries characterized by highly specialized applications, like retailing,” Mr. Carr said.
Clouds don’t need fat PCs
Kevin Kelly, who writes a blog called The Technium, highlights the lightweight eeePC out of Taiwan as the kind of stripped-down desktop that might be accessing computer clouds in the future. The trend, he suggests, may lead to a much different Internet than the one we experience today. “Eventually we’ll have the intercloud, the cloud of clouds. “This intercloud will have the dimensions of one machine comprised of all servers and attendant clouds on the planet,” he writes.
e sense for industries characterized by highly specialized applications, like retailing,” Mr. Carr said.
Clouds don’t need fat PCs
Kevin Kelly, who writes a blog called The Technium, highlights the lightweight eeePC out of Taiwan as the kind of stripped-down desktop that might be accessing computer clouds in the future. The trend, he suggests, may lead to a much different Internet than the one we experience today. “Eventually we’ll have the intercloud, the cloud of clouds. “This intercloud will have the dimensions of one machine comprised of all servers and attendant clouds on the planet,” he writes.
