Page 23 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

THE C L O UD REV O L UTION

by late 2008 it was clear that the term cloud meant not only
making use of innovative computing services out on the In-
ternet, but sometimes gaining access through the Internet to
computers in a powerful new type of data center with large re-
sources available. Part of the appeal of using this type of data
center was that you could pay for only what you used. The cloud

had moved front and center in thinking about the next wave of
computing. The resource might still be described as being lo-
cated in a squiggly circle, but oh, what a resource. The cloud
deals with customers on a broad scale and with a level of sophis-
ticated automation never seen before. The vague goings-on out
there in the cloud had taken on more significance and heft.
Even so, it is still difficult to summarize in a nutshell for

the CEO, COO, and CFO what your company might do with
cloud computing. Those who have watched the progression
just described sense that something big is under way, but it’s
hard to explain what it’s all about with a sound bite. Rather,
there is a large-scale experiment under way on many fronts to
determine what might be done “in the cloud.”
Many people agree that cloud computing is the next
phase of business and personal computing, but why call it
“cloud”? The term is ambiguous or, worse, amorphous. For

25 years, during tours of duty at Computerworld, Digital News,
Interactive Week,and InformationWeek, I’ve watched visitors draw
the cloud in whiteboard diagrams. It was the discard part of
the picture. But first, what exactly is the cloud, and how did it
go from something that you could ignore to something that
we can’t seem to stop talking about?

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