- Business Week: Google and the Wisdom of Clouds
Cloud computing is finding its way into the mainstream press. Story is pitched as Google versus Microsoft, but really there’s more to it than that. Google’s cloud is coming at you, the service provider, too. The buried story here is that Google isn’t just talking about cloud computing, or using it for its own services, but getting ready to offer pieces of its cloud computing infrastructure to companies and developers to use.
- We’ve written about Google’s ‘cloud factories’ in the past.
- Also: Google’s CEO on the Power of Clouds (Q&A)
- Pertinent Schmidt quote:
What [cloud computing] has come to mean now is a synonym for the return of the mainframe…You never visit them, you never see them. But they’re out there. They’re in a cloud somewhere. They’re in the sky, and they’re always around. That’s roughly the metaphor…In another sense, they’re one large supercomputer.
- Related graphic: check out this supercomputer (a cloud computer) installed in a former chapel at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) (see more pics here).
Does your central office look like this? ; >
(Note: these are real pics, not photoshop-jobs)
Meanwhile…..
- Amazon is adding online database capabilities to its Web services offerings. Lots of push back that a cloud DB can’t compete with a first-class relational database engine (not to mention the the type of high-powered, transaction-intensive systems banks and stock markets run on). Which conveniently ignores the concept — pointed out here – that in true “innovator’s dilemma” fashion disruptive technologies nibble at the edges until the leader (in this case, Microsoft and/or Oracle) can’t stop the bleeding….
- NYTimes: Static on the Dreamphone
Concern about Verizon’s open network plans being centered around a Verizon-controlled testing lab and a call for service providers to go the extra step toward embracing Web models:
And what if this phone company opened up its databases to developers of software applications? We could soon see mash-ups of your call history with the address books from your personal computer, your telephone and your social network. Now imagine a user community turned loose to annotate that data.
Like my journalism professor once said of writing, it’s best to think of “open” as a process and not an event….
