What is Cloud Computing?

A simple answer, Cloud Computing is making use of new internet based technology which uses the “cloud” (internet) to do the processing versus the client’s machine.

There are different flavors of Cloud Computing.

You have a client based Cloud Computing system where the Clients are the host, and the hosts are the clients at the same time. You see a lot of this in file sharing applications where they create a large distributed network that communicate over certain ports or protocols all defined by the same users that use the applications.

One of my favorite examples of how the power of Cloud Computing can revolutionize today’s industry is the example of Folding@home. Folding@home was designed to help solve large computational problems like protein folding and other molecule dynamics. When the PS3 was released they used their new processer to help out in the project. Because of PS3’s release it broke the Guinness Worlds Record as the most powerful distributed network. The world’s strongest supercomputer runs at about 1.7 pediFLOPS. The PS3 distributed network achieves speeds of just over one pediFLOPS currently, making it the third strongest computational force out there.

Why is this relevant? Because this is the future of computing; not only to rely on servers, but clusters of servers, cross communicating in large clouds, delivering data at super fast speeds with close to unlimited resources and expandability.

Cloud computing allows you to focus on your business. You have large datacenters with multiple connections to ISPs, ensuring a clean connection with no downtime, huge data repositories with pedibytes of storage available (1000’s of gigabytes), and complete flexibility of your system without being tethered to any hardware.

Without being tethered to hardware these days and working out of the cloud, you have the freedom to expand the company to multiple locations, countries, or even users, without having to worry about the entire IT infrastructure. This saves time, costs, and overhead in so many avenues.

Using thin clients, or basic laptops and desktops you can use the strength of enterprise servers and accomplish more without having to worry about the pitfalls of managing technology.