Cloud computing?

Cloud computing is the idea that you can store stuff 'out on the cloud' so for instance Google docs is cloud technology. You are storing .docx and .pdf's on their servers (so ultimately their HDD's) somewere in one of their data centers. The whole idea of cloud computing is the idea of outsourcing physical storage. The advantages are that, say your computer crashes and you loose a document you were working on because you had not saved it. They are trying to make it so your word editing software is streamed from the net. With cloud computing (the software that would stream from the net) it wouldn't have been lost. You would boot back up your computer and bam, it would still be there on the remote server you were working off. The disadvantages however is that there are people that would try to hack those servers and if they were successful would have a wide range to files that are not theirs.

One massive advantage to cloud computing is that it would eliminate the need for high end hardware and reduce the cost of computers in general. On the other hand though it does rely strongly on your bandwidth, if you have slow internet then you have slow everything with cloud computing. Other things it could be used for is, music (amazon just brought this out) and gaming.

Hope that helped.
 
Cloud computing is the idea that you can store stuff 'out on the cloud' so for instance Google docs is cloud technology. You are storing .docx and .pdf's on their servers (so ultimately their HDD's) somewere in one of their data centers. The whole idea of cloud computing is the idea of outsourcing physical storage. The advantages are that, say your computer crashes and you loose a document you were working on because you had not saved it. They are trying to make it so your word editing software is streamed from the net. With cloud computing (the software that would stream from the net) it wouldn't have been lost. You would boot back up your computer and bam, it would still be there on the remote server you were working off. The disadvantages however is that there are people that would try to hack those servers and if they were successful would have a wide range to files that are not theirs.

One massive advantage to cloud computing is that it would eliminate the need for high end hardware and reduce the cost of computers in general. On the other hand though it does rely strongly on your bandwidth, if you have slow internet then you have slow everything with cloud computing. Other things it could be used for is, music (amazon just brought this out) and gaming.

Hope that helped.

Yes that did help. I would opt for high end hardware myself under these circumstances (which is costing less as time goes on).
 
Yeah but the thing is there will be no need for high end hardware if cloud computing takes off, just high end bandwidth. As long as you can stream it at a constant rate why would you need a duel core GFX card and the like?
 
If you look at something like Google Docs you will see where Cloud Computing is heading. It's more than data storage, the applications actually execute "in the cloud". It's somewhat similar to what the mainframe model is where all you have on your end is a dumb terminal, the OS, applications and data all exist only "in the cloud" and all your end does is enter data and display the results.
 
Cloud computing question

If you look at something like Google Docs you will see where Cloud Computing is heading. It's more than data storage, the applications actually execute "in the cloud". It's somewhat similar to what the mainframe model is where all you have on your end is a dumb terminal, the OS, applications and data all exist only "in the cloud" and all your end does is enter data and display the results.

Are you suggesting that applications can execute faster "in the cloud" or execute in there whereas they wouldn't execute on a home computer?
 
No, I didn't suggest anything about them executng faster or slower. However, if the OS and applications exist and execute in the cloud, then they don't need to be installed locally or be maintained locally. New app installations, patches, upgrades etc... would all happen in the cloud and the end user would never have to deal with those functions again.
 
Re: Cloud computing question

Are you suggesting that applications can execute faster "in the cloud" or execute in there whereas they wouldn't execute on a home computer?

In some cases yes, sometimes it's a lot faster and easier to run large jobs (processor intensive) things on high end servers that are just a lot better than high end workstations for the task.

sometimes this may mean that you can execute things that you couldn't
for example you could run a 64bit windows 2008 application on a 32 bit xp machine...



the best way to describe cloud computing is this...


look at a network diagram, the universal symbol for the Internet is a cloud.

cloud computing is computing that happens somewhere on the internet.

whether that's some kind of software as a service (like google docs), data storage, backups, web hosting, file hosting, ftp, or even just a workstation that's visualised on a server somewhere that you have access to etc...

a cloud would usually be provided by a cluster of servers, most likely running some kind of virtualisation software, allowing machines to have a much greater uptime and machines to be provisioned much better...


basically, cloud computing is an ill defined buzz word used by marketing people to sell what was once well described (if perhaps not catchily named) services.
 
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