Page 230 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

MANA GEMENT STRATEGIES F O R THE CL OUD R EV OL UTION

address on the Internet. An estimated $3 billion in capital
equipment is in use at Ames, where 2,300 researchers are at
work, with a high percentage of them having advanced com-
puter skills. In short, as a result of its location and culture,
Ames has an atmosphere of constant experiment and devel-
opment related to the Internet.

NASA has stated that it wants to use the Ames Nebula Cloud
Computing Platform as a means of reengaging the public’s
interest in NASA’s space exploration, no simple task after the
highs achieved by the breathtaking Apollo missions to the moon
and the Rover missions that laid bare some of the secrets of
Mars’ red landscape. The Ames Research Center’s early at-
tempts at citizen involvement might serve as an example for

what businesses could do if they decided to invoke the re-
sources of a similar cloud platform.
First of all, let’s describe what has happened so far with
Nebula.
The Nebula platform is the future host for many NASA
Web sites, once its management software is ready for the task.
Nebula hosts the Web site nebula.nasa.gov, which contains
information, blogs, and reader comments about the Nebula
cloud resource. But Nebula is still a prototype, a work in

progress; at the time of this writing, it is expected to be avail-
able in beta operational mode in March 2010. It is intended
to host more Web sites at a lower cost than the present method
of building them.
William Fellows, cloud analyst at the 451 Group, wrote in a
December 10, 2009, report, “NASA Seeks Cloud Benefits Using

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