Page 42 - 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

This doesn’t mean that end users’ computers will get big-
ger and bigger until they’re on a par with data center servers.
They will continue to get more powerful, but that would have
happened anyway. But the servers in the data center will al-
ways outweigh them. The cloud will host massive clusters of
servers, like Google’s, whose combined power dwarfs that

of the largest mainframe. The goal isn’t equalization in com-
pute cycles between end user and data center. The goal is a
peer relationship, where the large can be directed by the small,
the mighty are controlled by the meek, and a monumentally
expensive server cluster responds to commands from a tiny
device held by a person of no social status whatsoever. (If the
user is good at cloud computing, then this will change.)

This is the heart of cloud computing, and, for those wit-
nessing the appetite of Facebook users for more services and
more computer power, it generates an excitement about the
huge possibilities of new services still before us. Sand Hill
Road venture capitalists stand ready to fund the visionaries.
In fact, the impetus of cloud computing drives a paradox.
The cloud server clusters will keep getting larger, while the
end user devices will keep getting smaller. Someday the largest
data center on earth may be run by a device that is not as pow-

erful as the long-forgotten original IBM PC from 1983. Several
such devices might fit in the palm of one’s hand. But no mat-
ter how much end user devices shrink, it’s essential that they
maintain and expand their ability to direct the resources in
the cloud.
For now, let’s let the technologists argue about what’s re-
quired for cloud data centers; they can certainly formulate

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