IT systems
Cloud Computing : The Coming Clouds and Storm
IT systems Those who live where it snows are all too familiar with the crazed weather forecasting phenomenon. Recently there were reports of 18-36” of snow where I live. Stores were emptied out, gas stations and lines, and everyone hunkered down for what turned out to be a dusting of snow followed by sunny days – no clouds at all. Why do weather forecasters do this? I’ve always assumed it was to generate increased amounts of viewership in order to sell more TV advertising. I wonder if the marketing for cloud computing operates in the same way.
For as long as I can remember, I have used a shared hosting site for my web projects. The company is called site5.com. As of this writing, they are offering web hosting with “unlimited web space, bandwidth, domains, email” for $4.95 per month, with a 30-day free trial. My account on site5.com is similar. I can run any kind of web site, web application, or database. I’ve been online with them for years.
My account access is on a shared Linux box. I can easily add more.
IT systems But would anyone call this cloud computing? Many probably would – many consider Hotmail and Salesforce.com to be cloud computing. Some probably wouldn’t – because I can’t auto-provision “instances” of a virtualized computer, and I can see (but not access) the other shared users on the same box.