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Appendix B
Green IT and Cloud Computing 239

Rexona deodorant sticks. In Tanzania, Key soap is sold in small units for
a few dollar cents.
Cloud computing has reduced the barrier to entry for providers of
innovative applications. Let’s consider the case of a small business that
developed an innovative Internet application. To bring this application
to market for its consumers on its own, it needs to procure hardware
related to providing Internet connectivity, such as application servers
and routers, purchase servers for support functions and e-mail, hire staff
to maintain the infrastructure, and create and manage plans to upgrade
infrastructure software and other related aspects, such as disaster recov-
ery, high availability, and security. Moreover, if the application becomes
successful and there is exponential growth of customers, the business
needs to address and manage the scalability requirements of the infra-
structure. All this translates to large initial fixed cost and recurring
operational costs and puts pressure on the business model. However,
using web hosting services provided by an ASP, the business can convert
this to a variable, periodic subscription cost at a fraction of the cost of
setting up and running the infrastructure on its own. The provider typi-
ptg
cally has a huge amount of available bandwidth, a trained staff to moni-
tor and fix problems with the infrastructure 24 hours a day, will back up
the data on a regular basis, and is responsible for disaster recovery.
Moreover, more capacity is available on demand with an adjustment to
the subscription fee.
Another aspect of cloud computing is the manner in which it repre-
sents a shift in the way information is stored, interrogated upon, and
delivered. This is akin to a computing equivalent of the evolution in
electricity a century ago when large utilities started producing and dis-
tributing power in an efficient manner. Farms and businesses shut down
their own generators and instead bought cheaper power from these utili-
ties. The founders of Google, Inc., Sergey Brin and Larry Page, had the
vision a decade ago “to organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible,” which translated into the popular Google search
engine and then to providing services related to Internet advertising
using that information. To grow and update its information bank,
Google spiders crawl the Internet looking for new Web sites and pages.
A spider is a program that visits Web sites and reads their pages and
other information to create entries for a search engine (http://searchsoa.
techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid26_gci212955,00.html) index.