Welcome to the “run-it-anywhere world.”
The first step was virtualization. As soon as there was a way to run software anywhere “virtually,” it was possible to imagine the world in which we now live where the things that we do with a computers depend less on a particular physical machine and more on access to a network.
The network in this case goes well beyond the walls of the enterprise and includes, for all intents and purposes, the entire Internet. While the man on the street may think of the Internet primarily in terms of web pages, the fact is that the Internet in essence connects every computer to every server in the world.
This level of connectivity gives organizations and individuals, at least potentially, access to all the information stored on the Internet. More significantly, though, it also gives them access to practically limitless computing capacity. This giant mass of information processing power is the key to what many see as the next big thing, cloud computing.
At first, having software that you could run anywhere meant “run on any machine that you control.” Now, it means “run anywhere on the network which includes the cloud.” However, just because you can run something anywhere doesn’t mean that you should. Why not?
Because it might not be secure. Indeed, concerns about security in the cloud are a big reason that 80% of companies surveyed had no plans this year to integrate any form of cloud computing into their IT infrastructure.
Everyone is asking: What is the most efficient way to manage workloads, of varying business priority and varying security requirements, in an environment where resources are infinitely scalable but only relatively secure?
We’re asking: Could the solution be “intelligent”?
Posted
Dec 02 2009, 09:53 AM
by
maxled77