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Who
can forget the 60's hit Get off my Cloud by the Rolling
Stones? If this was written today by any of the tens of
thousands of Cloud providers, they would be singing
PLEASE get on MY Cloud. Cloud computing is about as hot
as things get in IT. When you combine it with the other
super hot technology, Virtualization, you get a Perfect
Storm scenario, where we the people (the ones who use
computing every day to make a living) ultimately win.
There
is no doubt that the Cloud concept along with
Virtualization are the two biggest items in IT right
now; and rightfully so. Done correctly, either of these
technologies can save a company money, sometimes lots
and lots of money. Who could argue with that, given the
American business mantra of do more with less?
So let
me give you a quick overview on Cloud computing. First
let me define the Cloud. We have all seen pictures of
networks and how they work, usually when you are
accessing anything beyond your Local Area Network (LAN)
you head into the Cloud, the Cloud represents the
internet. Here's an example circled in red:
What's
inside the Cloud? Anything that has to do with data,
originally it was mostly moving data from one place to
another, but today, data can stop along the way and get
altered in some fashion and then passed on.
Now,
you could argue that the Cloud replaces the Black Box of
old, although usually what goes into a Black Box, comes
out quite differently on the other end, that is not
always true with Cloud computing.
Where this argument holds even more water is when we
look at the fact that your application may be in the
Cloud. So data going in might be very different from
data coming out. Nevertheless, Cloud computing is here
to stay. Odds are that you will have some private or
non-Cloud data on your desktop computer and some data in
the Cloud, these will combine to offer you a unique
computing experience on your desktop. However there are
some Cloud providers, Google comes to mind, that would
rather you have a simple thin client computer (not
really a lot of horsepower or storage) as your desktop
and that the Cloud does most of the work . . . hmmm . .
. that is
eerily reminiscent of the 1960's mainframe era when we
used dumb terminals and the guys in the "glass house"
ran the show on their mainframe computers.
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