I have been really fascinated (for a long while) by what Amazon is doing with their S3/EC2 technologies... S3 is:
Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers.
EC2 is:
Just as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) enables storage in the cloud, Amazon EC2 enables "compute" in the cloud. Amazon EC2's simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon's proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use.
You can read up on other Amazon web services on their site.
What fascinates me is this idea that eventually the hardware goes away. The power of computing has always been in the software, but we still require thousands of dollars of hardware just to support a fairly modest website like 360voice. What if we didn't need to purchase all the hardware? What if we could just use it in the "cloud" like a utility? In Nicholas Carr's book, The Big Switch. This is just the argument that he makes:
A hundred years ago, companies stopped generating their own power with steam engines and dynamos and plugged into the newly built electric grid. The cheap power pumped out by electric utilities didn’t just change how businesses operate. It set off a chain reaction of economic and social transformations that brought the modern world into existence. Today, a similar revolution is under way. Hooked up to the Internet’s global computing grid, massive information-processing plants have begun pumping data and software code into our homes and businesses. This time, it’s computing that’s turning into a utility.
Coincidentally, the company that I use for 360voice hosting just announced a cloud service called Mosso! Where was this when we were first starting out? I have also been following a company called RightScale which helps you work with the Amazon services...
As for Carr's book... it is a decent read from a historical perspective. The tail end of the book gets a bit week as he pontificates on the ramifications of an over-connected culture... not sure why that commentary was in there. But regardless, thinking of hardware as a cloud and building application systems on that type of technology will be a shift for many... I look forward to experimenting with the model where ever it makes sense.
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