For the past few weeks, I’ve had my head in the clouds. We decided to switch our company files from the large, stationary whirring server in our Wilmington, NC headquarters to a cloud-based server. There’s been a lot of hype around cloud computing, and, although I don’t think anyone truly understands it (who can explain how the internet actually works?), we’re all using it. If you’ve accessed your email via Gmail, AOL, or Yahoo, you’ve used the cloud. If you buy stuff from Amazon, you’re purchasing in a cloud. We may not “get it”, but 10-year-olds sure do!
Cloud computing allows you to access computing power instantly when you need it–anywhere, anytime. A cloud-based server allows for infinite scalability: if one of our videos goes viral and gets 5 million hits in a day, our site won’t crash. In fact, cloud servers can grow (or shrink) based on need. Like electricity, you only pay for what you use. Saving time, money, and space are some of the benefits.
Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems calls this the “Participation Age” (following the Ice Age, Iron, Age, Industrial Age and Information Age). He says: “You get on the Net and you do stuff. You IM (instant message), you blog, you take pictures, you publish, you podcast, you transact, you distance learn, you telemedicine. You are participating on the Internet, not just viewing stuff. We build the infrastructure that goes in the data center that facilitates the Participation Age.” In other words, they build the switch that turns on the security, directory, identity, privacy, storage, and computing capabilities of the internet; a “switch” we’ve learned to take for granted just like the light switches that flip on our electricity.
Even the CIA is turning to cloud computing! The Central Intelligence Agency has entrusted Amazon with a $600 million government contract to build a “private” cloud computing system to house its data. While the CIA looks to the future of clouds, some government agencies…well, they have their heads elsewhere. During a recent password audit by a local government agency, IT professionals learned that an employee was using the following password:
“MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofyNashville”
When asked why she had such a long password, the government employee rolled her eyes and said: “Hello! It has to be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital.”
Stay on cloud nine this weekend,
Bob
