Flickr user mansikka
The concept of cloud computing has been around awhile, but it is still in an evolutionary phase and continues to evolve and define itself. I was reading about Rackspace, a local tech company whose primary business is hosting dedicated servers for businesses, and was intrigued by their plans to launch a new website – www.building43.com focused on cloud computing. The more I read, the more interested I got in understanding this whole cloud computing thing.
Cloud computing has been described as the new electricity. Not unlike public utilities, you will be able to plug into a national grid of computing resources. In the future, all software (SaaS), hardware (HaaS), platforms, and infrastructure – essentially everything we need to operate and use our computers will be accessed from the Web and stored on remote servers. No user software needed. No hardware. Nada. It will all be out there and available in the “cloud” through a variety of data centers offering different levels of virtualization technologies, built on open standards and open source software.
According to Gartner Research, organizations are switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models” and that the “projected shift to cloud computing will result in dramatic growth in IT products in some areas and in significant reductions in other areas.” Amazon currently offers a service called Elastic Computer Cloud that allows you to purchase computer processing power on-line. Google has a similar product offering called App Engine that permits developers to run Web applications on Google’s infrastructure.
Pretty fascinating stuff. To learn more from someone who really knows what they are talking about check out this guy.
