Page 26 - 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

Many people point to Travelocity’s airline reservation sys-
tem and Apple’s iTunes Store as examples of cloud comput-
ing. While both of these are sophisticated e-commerce systems
running on big Internet data centers, they are not what I
would call cloud computing.
With the iTunes example, the so-called cloud is basically

controlling the end user consumer, taking the few digital bits
of information on song selection and credit card data that the
user inputs and returning a song as a larger collection of bits.
It has one purpose, and it executes the same electronic trans-
action for each end user, although shoppers can certainly pick
out the specific tune they want. Many iTunes enthusiasts be-
lieve that “the cloud” is working for them. At 99 cents per dig-

ital transfer, I think they’re working for a tiny subsection of
cloud real estate owned by Apple.
To some extent, the same can be said for eBay and Ama-
zon.com’s retail store, although admittedly each keeps mak-
ing use of more and more bits from the end user to supply
more services than a simple digital media download. They
clearly deserve citizenship in the emerging cloud nation and
are representative of its pioneers.
Google comes closer yet to a solid definition of the cloud,

with its massive data centers around the world powering in-
stant responses to millions of users. At Google headquarters
in Mountain View, California, there’s a display of a revolving
world, with graphic spikes rising above population centers
like Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The spikes are a visu-
alization of search engine use by location, showing that hun-
dreds of thousands of searches are going on in each place

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