O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media. At a recent conference on Web 2.0, he describes cloud computing as the movement or trend in computing for all devices with an Internet connection to rely more on resources out in the network instead of resources installed on their own machine.
What is Cloud Computing?
The concept of cloud computing is one of a user sitting at a terminal taking advantage of services, storage space, and resources provided somewhere else - on another computer, through an Internet connection.
The user's word processor documents may be stored on one computer, perhaps along with the actual program he uses to edit the documents. His pictures and videos are stored on another computer. His email is saved on yet a third machine that he can access from any workstation. The user has a personal calendar, checkbook ledger, links to favorite sites, and more saved in cyberspace.
Where are the user's documents, email, favorites and pictures? If you ask him, he will say Google Docs, Hotmail, Delicious and Flickr - he'll give you URLs. If you produce a map and ask for the specific location, he'll look puzzled. He doesn't know.
Yesterday his emails were in Chicago and his documents were in Seattle. Today they've been moved to other servers. But the URLs haven't changed. He just knows is that they're "out there" - in the cloud...
History of Cloud Computing
Technically, cloud computing has been around for a while. The Web itself is a form of cloud computing. Users access web pages that are in the cloud.
Over time, speed and reliability on the Internet improved. Improvements in computer processing and connection speed have made the Web an increasingly interactive experience. An increased number of users were able to contribute to the Web's content.
The success of interactive and collaborative activities on the Web led to more personal services being available through an Internet connection. When Hotmail began to make web-based email popular in the 1990's it foreshadowed such services.
Cloud computing has become increasingly practical in recent years because of increased broadband access and the trend toward permanent connectivity (as opposed to a dial-up approach where computers are constantly being disconnected and later reconnected to transfer data).
Cloud Computing Today (and Tomorrow)
In 2007 the move toward cloud computing began to develop more momentum. Google, Amazon, IBM and other industry leaders have articulated a clear vision of cloud computing as the dominate model for the future.
A recent Business Week article said that the move toward cloud computing "signals a fundamental shift in how we handle information." The article compared the cloud computing trend to the move to electricity a century ago. Companies stopped having to produce their own energy and instead began plugging in to an electricity grid. People will one day use the cloud the way they use electricity - without giving it much thought.
Cloud computing holds a great deal of economic potential. It makes resources available to small businesses that were previously the privilege of only large corporations.
For the average computer user, cloud computing means being able to access personal resources like documents, email, data, and services that in the pre-cloud era were attached to a PC's desktop in a fixed location. Those resources are now available for a user both at home and at the office, through a laptop on the beach, or with an iPhone or Blackberry in the dentist's waiting room. Available from the cloud...
Greg Cruey - Greg Cruey is an educator and journalist. He works as an educational interventionist specializing in a small, rural school in Central ...
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