You might as well start a new tag on your del.icio.us profile for cloud computing. It is the terminological heir of web 2.0. And it's meaning is equally vague. Cloud computing means many things right now - ranging from a way to move data and applications around (or to scale them) without impacting quality for end user...or to applying supercomputing to the masses and the web (using a mesh network instead of only supercomputers)... or to purchasing computing power on demand...or to fluid data exchange and interaction regardless of devices. Basically, it's about the web. Everything on the web. Usable by any device. Or platform. With the complexity and technical challenges being managed without end-user awareness. The mess of different devices and distributed data don't inconvenience the end user. To a degree, it's an attempt to make technology more transparent and data access more flexible, reducing computing to utility status. Nicholas Carr equates cloud computing with spice trails of centuries gone by offers this lovely quote by Eric Schmidt: "When the network becomes as fast as the processor, the computer hollows out and spreads across the network."
Posted by gsiemens at July 16, 2008 4:56 PM | TrackBack