Page 21 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

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THE CLOUD

REVOLUTION

In works of art, from the photos of Ansel Adams to the paint-
ings of ancient Chinese artists, clouds have often been given
tangible form and purpose. In Adams’s arid West, they served
as a backdrop to granite peaks, holding out the promise of
rain. To the Chinese, an all-encompassing mist allows special
features to emerge out of the mountain landscape, or some-

times there will be a series of ridges as far as the eye can see,
their bases cloaked in clouds—an illusion of infinity.
For many years the cloud has played a more prosaic role
among the squares, rectangles, and circles of the architecture
diagrams of technology projects, but its meaning has been am-
biguous. “The cloud” was a euphemism for everything that
was beyond the data center or out on the network. The action

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