Page 103 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

JUST O V ER THE HORIZON, PRIV ATE CL OUDS

what made it hard to resist was the fact that it worked in so
many cases. It was sufficient for much enterprise networking,
which was discovered as enterprises started relying on inter-
nal TCP/IP networks called intranets to carry traffic derived
from the Internet. These intranets turned out to be “good
enough” even when their performance lagged that of the

proprietary networks. And the messages got through with
high reliability. They might on rare occasions arrive minutes
or even hours later than the sender intended, when a router
outage led to concentrations of traffic on the nearby routers
drafted by many other routers as the way around the outage.
Instead of maintaining an expensive proprietary network
across the country, the company could let its internal TCP/IP

network originate the message, then let the Internet serve as
its external connection to other facilities, partners, suppliers,
and customers.
If there was still resistance to conversion, it faded at the
mention of the price. The Internet was free, and the TCP/IP
protocol used inside the company was freely available, built
into various versions of Unix and Linux and even Microsoft’s
Windows Server. When internal operation is aligned with the
external world operations—and the cost is the lowest avail-

able—the decision on what to do next becomes inevitable. A
similar alignment will occur between external cloud data cen-
ters and the internal cloud.
To prepare for that day, it’s important to start expanding
x86 administration skills and x86 virtualization skills rather
than sitting out this early phase of cloud computing. There
are immediate benefits to starting to reorient your computing

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