In this race around cloud computing, who can beat the beat?

Is your business computer fast enough? This is a difficult question to answer. For many enterprises, the performance of their own computer equipment may never meet demand, because the speed of the enterprise's internal information explosion is much faster than Moore's law. An easy way is to buy more and more advanced equipment, which is what the equipment company wants. Intel, AMD is non-stop to launch a series of multi-core processors, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and other companies of the server sales staff have never relaxed customer care.

But the problem comes with it. In particular, it is not foolproof to keep updating computing equipment for a large number of companies that have stretched their budgets. Another point is that companies have to hire more places to store the huge iron boxes that are incredibly calorific-and the resulting power consumption itself is a scratching question. Is there a more cost-effective solution? The advent of "cloud computing" may have opened a gap in the door to the solution of the problem.

The rise of cloud computing

Cloud computing is a new business model, and its core is still the data center, which uses mainly thousands of industrial standard servers, made up of Intel or AMD-produced processors and other hardware vendors. Enterprises and individual users are able to compute through high-speed Internet, thus avoiding a large amount of hardware investment.

In short, cloud computing will make the future of the Internet a supercomputing paradise. "The basic principle of cloud computing is that the Enterprise data center runs more like the Internet by distributing computing across a large number of distributed computers, rather than on a local computer or a remote server." This allows the enterprise to switch resources to the required applications and to access the computer and storage systems as needed. "At the IBM Innovation Forum in Shanghai in mid-November, Willychiu, vice president of IBM's High-performance on Demand Solutions team, explained to reporters.

This is a revolutionary move, for example, from an ancient single generator to a power plant's centralized power supply model. It means that computing power can also be used as a commodity circulation, like gas, water and electricity, easy to use, low-cost. The biggest difference is that it is transmitted over the Internet.

The technical competition attracted a large number of contestants. Information giants, including Sun, IBM, Microsoft, Google (www.g.cn) and Amazon (www.amazon.cn), have come to the track. "Cloud computing is on the rise. "The driving force behind cloud computing is the development of high-speed Internet connections, cheaper and powerful chips, and the development of hard drives and data centers," said Danreed, a Microsoft supercomputer researcher. ”

Internet companies are the forerunners, and Google's search engine can be seen as an early product of cloud computing. The user's search request is sent over the Internet to a large server cluster on Google, which is completed before returning to the user's desktop. Amazon.com recently opened a service called "Resilient Computing Cloud" to developers, which allows small software companies to buy Amazon data center processing capabilities as needed.

The IT giants are looking for bigger business opportunities. Last year, Sun launched a "black box" program based on cloud computing theory. According to its plan, future data centers will not be confined to crowded, muggy rooms, but a removable container--it is loaded with 10 tons of reasonably-housed servers as a removable data center. It can serve both large companies with tens of thousands of employees and support for SMEs. As for the best placement of the data center, it is recommended that the suburbs of the field, preferably near the power station, so that the cost can be minimized.

IBM, the blue giant, also cast a heavy bet on it, and named it "Blue Cloud".

Not long ago, IBM and Google reached a partnership, two companies will each contribute 20 million ~2500 million dollars, to engage in computer science research professors and students to provide the necessary computer hardware and software and related services. "For me, it's like 2000 in the face of Linux," says Willianm.zeilter, senior vice president of the IBM System and technology team. "At present, the company has deployed more than 200 research and development personnel in this business research."

"In a sense, cloud computing is a natural development of grid computing models," he said. IDC analyst Frankgens thinks. So who is going to win the game around cloud computing?

Who is the master?

So far, Sun has valiantly to the front. The computer giant's "black box" program has entered the launch phase, while most of its competitors ' services are still brewing. "We are progressing well, coupled with the full communication with our customers, we know we are expected to succeed." Sun CEO Schuwarz Jonathan wrote in his personal blog.

Microsoft's advantage is also obvious, with hundreds of millions of Windows users around the world, Microsoft has to do is to connect these users over the Internet more closely and provide them with cloud computing services-through the windwoslive. "When you think of storage, you think of live." "This is what Bill Gates said this summer that Microsoft is creating a user experience, a pattern that can be stored from a generic device store to any time, with the obvious purpose of being on an equal footing with Google on the internet strategy."

However, Google's position in a short period of time is still not shaken, its open platform embodies the essence of the cloud computing model. The vast majority of the basic software required by Google's cloud computing services is open source, meaning that users are free to get the code and modify it. "Google's programming model and its true openness are critical, and ordinary people can write apps without having to be PhD at Stanford or Carnegie Mellon University." IDC analyst Frankgens said.

For IBM, this is an excellent opportunity to expand its own territory. IBM has all the benefits of developing a cloud computing business: Application servers, storage, management software, middleware, and so on, so IBM will naturally not miss a chance to become a celebrity. "Cloud computing will be the next major business for IBM," Willychiu said. ”

Google's collaboration with IBM has a complementary effect. Two of companies are trying to integrate their technology, IBM is familiar with the running of enterprise-class computers, and Google's begotten-two companies, known for its large traffic data and high-speed Internet links, are expected to create significant results. IBM CEO Samuel Pamisano jokingly described the project as a wonderful partner for Google's young engineers and IBM's fat Old man. Forresterresearch analyst Adelian said cloud computing programming technology would be the benchmark next-generation computer programming structure, and IBM wanted to get to the commanding heights to take advantage of Google's network.

It doesn't matter who really becomes the spokesperson for Cloud computing, and it's important that with this series of it giants behind it, there's no doubt that cloud computing has a bright future. The blueprint for cloud computing has come to pass: in the future, with just one laptop or an iphone, you can do everything we need with Web services, even tasks such as supercomputing. From this perspective, end users are the real owners of cloud computing.