Did you see the article last week on The Chronicle of Higher Education about IBM’s new Cloud Software for colleges? Before I even provide a link to the article you should probably check out the IBM press release. They also have an informative video posted on YouTube about the initiative.
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Over a year and a half ago, an article in Forbes proclaimed that cloud computing would lead to the Death of Hardware for many companies.
The next revolution in high tech is taking place inside the “cloud” of the Internet. Small outfits looking to do lots of computing in a hurry are not buying hardware anymore; they’re renting from established players that already operate vast networks of cheap computers. Time-sharing, a concept from the dawn of the computing age, is back with a vengeance.
A while back a PC Magazine wrote What Does Cloud Computing Mean for You?, and it is definitely worth a second look.
Some of the important takeaways from the piece are about how it will effect not just corporate users but also end users. In fact I think it’s safe to say that we probably are doing more with cloud computing today than most of us even realize.
“The most important single characteristic of a cloud is abstraction of the hardware from the service,” says John Willis, a noted cloud-computing expert and blogger, explaining that the location of the servers is not as important as easy access to the data. “However you define it, I think cloud technology will have a footprint in every business that does IT within the next five years.”
Read MoreThis past week it was announced that the IBM/Google cloud computing initiative is giving 14 universities almost $5 million in grants to pick up cloud computing projects. The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded the grant money.
Although these universities will run a range of projects what is most interesting is academia’s excitement and embracement of this rapidly developing and exciting technology.
Read MoreIf you read any article about cloud computing there is a lot of confusion and speculation being written about this topic. Most will admit there is a huge amount of buzz and hype around the terms, but there is a lot of speculation as to its validity for mission critical data, reliability, and overall level of service. The truth of the matter is that much of the underlying infrastructure aren’t brand new concepts only the idea of getting resources through your network connection from offsite instead of a local network. Also this all encompassing term is being used to include any service that you receive remotely which for a lot of organizations there has been resources being consumed this way that are now being reclassified.
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