Page 58 - 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

a management console with a human watching. However, the
cloud’s own monitoring system is capable of anticipating need
and quickly firing up additional “virtual machines” as needed.
By doing its computing in the cloud, a business like Cyber-
nautic can grow its Web site business quickly, without hiring a
burgeoning IT staff or undergoing the expense of construct-

ing an overbuilt data center with a large margin of surplus
capacity. At the same time, a large enterprise could siphon off
demanding but noncritical jobs in its data center by sending
them to the cloud and reducing the capacity that it needs to
keep on hand.

The Cloud Is Different from
What’s Gone Before

Much of what we’ve covered so far could theoretically apply to
older, specialized forms of computing as well. The IBM main-
frame frequently had a capacity surplus for the workloads that
it processed, and it could juggle workloads with ease. For ex-
ample, IBM Sysplex, a cluster of mainframes, generated enor-
mous capacities.

Many universities, including Cornell, the University of Illi-
nois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Texas at
Austin, have built out a supercomputer from a cluster of small
machines. The Department of Energy is a major supercom-
puter builder. NASA, NOAA, and the National Laboratories
have also linked arms with industry leaders to build high-
performance computing clusters for use by researchers and

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