COMPUTING:On cloud nine

With the promise of scalable, on-demand, compute resources from virtualised infrastructures, lower costs and an innovative array of new hosted applications, cloud computing may just be the technology that survives the hype and delivers a true paradigm shift. However, with a high degree of user interest there is a headlong rush to bring services and products to market and the industry has yet to make its move in developing a baseline set of standards … until now.

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet.^[1][2] Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud” that supports them.^[3]

Andreas Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, where he still consults, knows a thing or two about cloud computing. He’s chief development officer for Arista Networks, a Silicon Valley start-up that supplies networking equipment used to build these massive arrays of servers.

He also was one of the first people to invest in Google in 1998. His $100,000 investment in the company started by Sergey Brin and Larry Page helped turn the Birkenstock-wearing engineer into a billionaire.

QWhat do you make of the potential for cloud computing, both as a market and a technology?

AIt is a surprising evolution in the history of computing. Every application can now shift to the Web. You can access any application remotely. IDC has estimated that by 2012 the market for cloud computing infrastructure will grow to $42 billion, up from $16 billion in 2008. It’s the fastest-growing slice of the spending on information technology. Right now, it’s a small sliver of the overall pie. … But it’s a growing slice of the pie.

QWhat are some uses of cloud computing?

AHollywood uses high-performance clusters to … render movies. The advantage of the cloud is that it’s always running and not idle. They get much better utilization. These computer farms can simulate car crashes, render movies. Facebook also does an enormous amount of computing behind the scenes to generate relevant content to you.

QAs a consumer, what’s the benefit?

AYou get convenience. You don’t have to deal with servers, data storage or big expensive computers. The laptop accesses everything. You don’t have to worry about backup or security; it’s all being handled by the company that manages the cloud.

QWho are some of the key players in this space?

AThe leader is Amazon. They started in the business by renting out their idle servers during non-holiday-shopping seasons. Google provides applications in the cloud. Facebook is a cloud company; they host a number of third-party applications on their cloud.

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