Page 69 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

THE AMORPHOUS CL OUD

The cloud data center is a cluster different from any that
we’ve seen before. The fact that this resource is available to
many users at highly economical rates is part of the excite-
ment of cloud computing.
We still haven’t touched on one of the most important
ways in which the cloud becomes elastic, however, and that’s

virtualization. The impact of virtualization has been so great
that it’s the subject of the next chapter. But we know that elas-
ticity is built into the design of the cloud data center. It’s
elasticity that is responsible for the illusion that we are con-
nected to a boundless resource, capable of processing the
most demanding job we can conjure up. It’s an outstanding
feature of cloud computing.

Elasticity is responsible for much of the excitement sur-
rounding cloud computing. If we can process anything that
we want, then what do we want to process? Whether the cloud
user is an individual or a business, a new opportunity is un-
folding. A convergence of technologies, evolutionary in form,
looks more and more revolutionary in scope. Critics are
inclined to say that there’s nothing in the cloud that they
haven’t seen before. Some critic, I suspect, said the same thing
about the printing press.

Cloud computing takes a set of technologies that have
been already proved elsewhere and leverages them to gener-
ate new economies of scale and new end user services. Every-
one is fascinated with the size of the cloud data centers—eight
football fields across, one analyst said. But some observers are
intrigued with what the end user is going to do with this

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