Page 22 - 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

that affected the project at hand was in the data center; the
cloud was a mishmash of remotely connected parts and net-
work protocols that didn’t have much to do with the immedi-
ate problem. No matter how nonartistic the systems architect,
he could always represent the cloud—an offhand, squiggly
circle in the background of his scheme.

As business use of the Internet has grown, the cloud has
moved from a throwaway symbol in the architect’s diagram to
something more substantial and specific: it has become the
auxiliary computing, supplied through Web site applications
and Web services, such as credit checks and customer address
lookups, that backed up the operation of standard business
applications in the enterprise data center. Businesses built

around Web services, such as Google, Amazon.com, and eBay,
produced a new type of data center that was more standard-
ized, more automated, and built from mass-produced per-
sonal computer parts. Access to these data centers was kept
under wraps for several years as their builders sought to main-
tain a competitive advantage. As the notion caught on that it
was possible to provide more and more powerful services over
the Internet, cloud computing came to mean an interaction
between an end user, whether a consumer or a business com-

puting specialist, and one of these services “in the cloud.”
When Microsoft appeared on the scene determined to
stake a larger claim to this new form of computing, it started
talking about its facilities in Chicago and Ireland as a new type
of data center. Google, which played a key role in establishing
the type, began illustrating key features of its data centers, and

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