By Dan S Smith As IT within business continues to grow at an unprecedented rate, one of the most talked about IT technologies at present is the virtual IT infrastructure. Having been available for a number of years, virtual IT infrastructures are continuing to develop at an exponential rate and those virtual infrastructures available today [...]
In recent years, we have witnessed the strong growth of cloud computing, which refers to both applications delivered as services over the Internet and the infrastructure (including both hardware and software systems) in the data centers that supports those services. In general, cloud computing provides a centralized platform where programs can be executed and data can be stored. Cloud services built on the platform can offload many computing tasks normally solely done on the client devices and can be accessed instantly from anywhere at any time. However, until recently, the place where screen images that interface with users are rendered has been mostly done locally on client devices.
Over last year or so, the term Cloud Computing has been making headlines. There are several new entrants into the Cloud Computing industry. The idea is simple, you have all these computers or servers directly connected to the cloud (The Internet) and you have massive computing power at your fingertips. Companies like Rackspace, GoGrid, Amazon, and AT&T are all offering one form of Cloud Computing or another. The services available from these companies range from simple “Cloud Storage”, to fully scalable virtual servers in the cloud.
Computers have come a long way over the years, but this isn’t always so obvious when it comes to servers. Servers are computers that host information for other computers on a network. They have a lot of processing potential. A lot of power. And yet most physical servers–also called hosts–fail to tap into that power. [...]
I stumbled into cloud computing almost by accident. I was in college doing my masters and after my first idea of my thesis failed to get off the ground, I slowly ventured into cloud computing and before long I was deep into it. Ever since I left college I have tried to keep in touch [...]
