What changes cloud computing will bring to businesses and individuals

"I remember that in the 1996, when we were promoting Internet applications in Hong Kong, I could not think of 12 years from now, the work life of each of us is inseparable from the Internet." Today, I am in Beijing to promote cloud computing, do not know what will be 12 years later? June 24, 2008, Zhou Weixian, chairman of the International Commercial Machinery Company (IBM), said at the launch of IBM's Greater China Area Cloud computing Center.

So what changes will cloud computing bring to our businesses and individuals in 12 years?

Ideally, the user needs an application that does not need to run on a user's personal computer, cell phone, etc., but runs on a large server cluster on the Internet, and the data that the user is working on is not stored locally but is kept in the data center of the Internet.

The management and maintenance of these data centers are managed and maintained by the companies that provide cloud computing services, and they ensure strong computing power and sufficient storage space for users to use. At any time, any place, the user can access these services through any terminal equipment connected to the Internet. That is to say, both enterprises and individuals can implement on-demand applications on the cloud.

Cloud computing is the predecessor of Grid Computing (Computing) and software as a service (SaaS), Grid computing is to split a calculation into fragments, submitted to the network system on each computer (grid point), and then summary completed. However, in Chinese enterprises, the application of grid computing has not been popularized, and the application of universities and research institutions is relatively large.

However, a large number of companies have set up their own data centers, and suppliers say they are about to provide a public cloud computing center, between the two centers inside and outside how to use it?

Nick Donofrio, IBM's vice president for global innovation and technology, Nick Donoferrio The answer: Companies are setting up a wall between Internet services and data center services, and it's time to break the wall and put the two types of services together. "5 years ' time will be able to witness my words. We need a hybrid model that can achieve scalability and consumption based on Internet computing, as well as flexibility, security, accuracy, and predictability in data center computing. So the combination of the two is a commitment to the future. Of course, this is not going to happen overnight, and it will take some time. "

In China, for example, there are large companies with generators that, in theory, can supply electricity without relying on a public grid. In practice, however, most companies are using electricity from the public grid and then paying the electricity according to the amount of electricity they use. The same applies to cloud computing, the first of which the enterprise will build its own data center, and even have its own cloud, to complete its own calculation and storage; In the second case, it is possible for a company to hire a public "cloud" to pay for its use; In the third case, a large enterprise, with its own data center, Also applies the external "cloud".

Donoferrio also said: "Banks and the telecommunications industry to provide customers with the application and content of the field, should be the earliest application of the cloud computing model industries."

For Chinese companies, security and stability are a key concern for the real application of cloud computing. Beijing Soft Power Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as soft power) Deng Ai, vice president of cloud computing. The security explanation is that data stability and security on the cloud will mature as the cloud grows, and companies can choose their own cloud computing model.

In addition to the June 24 opening in Beijing, the IBM Greater China Cloud Computing Center, this May 10, Wuxi Taihu New Town Science and Education Industrial park, also stands an IBM commercial Operation Cloud Computing Center, by IBM's partners soft power to assist and support the operation of this platform, This is IBM's first Asia-Pacific Business Cloud Computing Center. According to Vice President Deng Ai, Wuxi's cloud computing center is helping small and medium-sized enterprises in Wuxi to explore various possible models of cloud computing applications.

Wuxi has a garment enterprise resource planning (ERP) company, through the application of this cloud computing platform, has its own apparel ERP products leasing to a large number of garment enterprises.

Kai-Fu Lee has been emphasizing Google's leadership in the field of cloud computing. Each of our search instructions, he says, will drive Google's work in front of thousands of computers and servers and give us the answers we want in an instant. That is to say, Google itself is a good user of cloud computing. Kai-Fu Lee said: "Google may be the world's most PC companies, a good hundreds of thousands of PCs support a huge amount of search calculation, Google silently behind people built a group of clouds, people no longer need to calculate their own, just in the network terminal search can." "

Objectively speaking, several cloud computing pioneers have their own features, and the CIO is best to choose and follow their own needs:

IBM: Is the hardware and software, the service includes the comprehensive IT service provider, the development cloud computing can realize its software, the hardware, the service better fusion. IBM's cloud computing tends to provide services to businesses.

Google:google Cloud computing has been very good in its search engine applications. Google, which has always targeted individual users, still makes a big fuss over the cloud computing applications of individual users. Yahoo's cloud computing is similar to Google's.

Yian (EMC): In addition to the storage of large customers have to face a lot of storage is not too large enterprises. As with the long tail theory, the storage requirements of the long tail back-end enterprises combined are quite large, and for this reason, EMC pioneered the SaaS model for companies that store long tails. Recently, EMC has also launched the EMC Cloud Host service, which uses cloud computing to meet the storage needs of small and midsize enterprises.

Amazon: Amazon's "S3+EC2" is also the embryonic form of cloud computing. S3+EC2 just came out and made everyone's eyes bright, as a customer you can have the same reliability and bandwidth as the Amazon Web site, and the charge depends entirely on the amount of traffic, storage, and CPU, S3 gives a space "infinity" and a reliable, performance-intensive "hard drive", allowing for massive photos, Disc sharing application of the implementation of the technology threshold immediately dropped a lot, EC2 is equal to give you the "unlimited" platform in the Amazon Web Room server, can be said to Beck Wave.

Of course, some people jokingly and predicted that the future of the world only "5 computers" or "5 cloud", they are Google, Yahoo, IBM, Microsoft (Microsoft) and Amazon website. Deng Ai, vice president of soft power, said: "The future of the cloud world may be 5, or maybe 50, in short, the future of cloud computing is very limited." "

Overall, IBM and Google's approach to cloud computing is relatively far off, but the route is different--for enterprise users; the latter is good at individual users. For the future of cloud computing, Donoferrio confidently said: "One day, cloud computing is everywhere, you can not leave it." "