Page 33 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

THE C L O UD REV O L UTION

These data centers on the network foster new kinds of soft-
ware that in themselves are marvels of recent engineering.
With the Hadoop cloud-based data engine, data is lifted off
hundreds or thousands of disk drives in parallel without
“thrashing” the drive spindles—that is, forcing the drive heads
to move this way and that in the struggle to collect data from a

spinning disk. Drive thrashing is how enterprise databases
work, but it’s much too time-consuming for the cloud. With
Google Maps, an image of a particular place is offered on the
screen before us, and as we move the cursor, the map extends
in front of us as if it has no edge, no boundary. By following
the cursor, we can travel as far as we wish. Somewhere in the
Google data center, a sensor sees the direction of the cursor

and anticipates the data that we’ll need next, preloading it
into the browser. In the cloud, the illusion of an endless re-
source somehow becomes a reality. Other systems can’t do it,
but the cloud can map to the ends of the earth.

The Shifting Boundary: Illusion versus Reality

So how much of the cloud is real and how much is illusion? It’s
the Internet that gives us a sense of connectedness and reach.

That was true before the term cloud computing came to the
fore. The Internet plus big data centers somehow still does
not equal the cloud. What is it about the cloud that intrigues
even otherwise worldly technologists? What is the break-
through that everybody is talking about? That’s what this book
attempts to answer.

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