Page 37 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

THE C L O UD REV O L UTION

self-contained data centers, but the PC’s potential suffered in
the process. The relationship was one of master to slave—data
center server to PC—or, at best, master and servant. In many
cases, the intelligence of the PC was discarded and the machine
was reduced to the status of what’s known in the industry as a
dumb terminal, a device that couldn’t think. It wasn’t expected

to think on its own, just follow orders. Its role was to display the
results sent to it by the mainframe or other large server.
While the PC has continued to steadily gain in power, it
had a second major weakness. Its design was focused on the
individual, and that design helped to isolate it from the rest of
the world. PC networks could be built to tie together fellow
employees or the staffs of partner companies, but the PC

couldn’t get far in the outside world on its own on any kind of
impulsive, ad hoc basis. It had to follow preset paths defined
by larger systems and higher-ups in the organization.
The first phase of the Internet started to change that, giv-
ing the PC access to powerful servers on a worldwide network,
servers that were eager to share information and content. But
these gains to the user had come at a steep price. In many
cases, participation on Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web
meant that once again the PC had been reduced to a mas-

ter/slave relationship. The early browser window might give
end users access to the weather in Beijing or even the latest
poetry in Prague, but after making a connection, all it could
do was display the content sent to it by an Internet server.
Every user was sent the same content. The first phase of In-
ternet computing had taken a step backward, reducing the PC
to a slave, a dumb terminal.

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