Screaming all day! What is "cloud computing"?

Recently, Microsoft Global vice president, China's regional president Zhang wrote screws "cloud computing." The following is the original excerpt from the "Cloud Computing" trilogy: 2008, after years of accumulated and ongoing exploration, Microsoft officially released its full cloud computing platform Windows Azure (blue sky) and invested heavily in building data centers around the world. These phenomena indicate that after years of accumulation and continuous exploration, cloud computing has finally become a common and mainstream voice of the global IT industry.

Seemingly sophisticated "cloud computing" is not difficult to understand, in fact, all the computing applications and information resources are connected to the Internet for individuals and business users at any time access, sharing, management and use-related applications and resources can be obtained from any server and data center in the world. The real "cloud computing" platform should be able to achieve the following three functions.

1: Provide "resources"-including computing, storage and network resources. This requires service providers to set up large, globalized databases and storage centers that enable "massive" storage, excellent security and high privacy and reliability-and should be efficient, low-cost, and energy-saving.

2: Provide dynamic Data service. Data includes raw data, semi-structured data, and processed structured data. We are entering a time of data-king-a good cloud computing architecture must have the intelligence to provide large-scale data storage, sharing, management, mining, search, analysis and service.

3: Provide a cloud computing platform-including software development APIs, environments, and tools. Only in this way, cloud computing can truly form a vitality, viscous, sustainable development of the "ecological system." I personally think that this is the biggest value of cloud computing.

"Cloud computing" should not also be impossible overnight, the hope that users overnight from the "end" to the "cloud" is very naïve idea-users should decide to determine the most suitable for their interests in the deployment of resources, so that the "cloud" and "end" to achieve a commendable balance between. Only through the Cloud + end, cloud interaction can maximize the use of cloud capabilities to achieve the best user experience.

Now, data, software, platforms, infrastructure have become "cloud computing" strategic resources, and future "cloud computing" development depends on the above strategic resources and "centralized computing, on-demand" mode of integration and relevance of the degree-a simple formula to express is:

Cloud computing = (data + software + platform + infrastructure) * Services

Data: The importance of data is self-evident-no data, no applications, no services. Data-centric computing (centric Computing) will really put users at the heart of the computing experience and will determine the success or failure of the cloud computing model. But to realize this, we must first solve the problem of intelligent, structured arrangement and data connection among the massive data.

Software (Software): The role of software is to retrieve, discover, correlate, process and create data, and Microsoft's adoption of the "Software + Services" model, it is also the hope that the integration of the most powerful software and real-time update Services, for customers to create a diversified experience of equipment.

Platform (Platform): Windows is the most widely used platform in the PC era, and the "cloud computing" era will also give birth to its own common platform-perhaps Microsoft's "Blue Sky"-or a new platform for other companies to take into account the well-being of industry partners and the user experience.

Infrastructure (infrastructure): infrastructure determines the service scope and service capabilities of the cloud service provider. "Cloud computing" infrastructure needs a lot of money and research and development resources to invest, so only powerful enterprises can be competent, but the "cloud computing" application process will start from individuals and small and medium-sized enterprises-they want to put some (but not all) information resources and applications to the cloud service providers to manage, This enables simpler and more flexible control with lower costs. Obviously, this situation is completely different from the rise of the mainframe in the last century (which originated in the fields of military and public affairs) and the mainstream of PCs (which were first applied by large enterprises).

Recently, the Chinese Electronic Society has set up a committee of cloud computing experts, some enterprises are also starting to build their own corporate cloud, which shows that cloud computing in China has been a great concern, and has become a hot spot in academia and industry. There is no doubt that it is gratifying that the evolution of--it technology has never been silent and thrilling. Whether from the historical experience or from the realistic demand, China should be early into the "cloud computing" tide, in the global computing and communications industry in a new round of storms to seize the vantage point for future development.