Cloud computing represents a game changing force in the world of IT and information management. It’s a force that’s being felt across every kind of business information platform from customer service to online video games.
Simply put, cloud computing refers to an off-site way of handling data that’s flexible because it allows virtual machines to spawn as needed. This usually involves hundreds of servers strung together that can be called into action at will.
Cloud computing represents only the latest in a string of changes in media that can be traced back to the advent of MTV.
MTV didn’t invent the music video. In fact, using films to promote music goes back to Al Jolson’s performance in “The Jazz Singer,” the first movie with sound. The form began to resemble the music video when performers like the Beatles and the Monkeys began producing films for songs that could stand alone outside a larger narrative. It wasn’t so much music videos that changed the way music was marketed, but cable television. Cable opened the information gates wide, allowing artists to feature their specialized content, running into viewers’ homes on a twenty-four hour basis at low cost.
Suddenly, music videos became more than a way to target a slightly wider audience, it became essential. Before long, the popular music market was crowded with performers eager to one-up each other in an effort to create more interesting and effective vehicles for their music.
The game, as they say, was changed. There could be no going back.
The first instance of implementing infrastructure in a way that resembles cloud computing came when telephone companies switched from rigid networks to Virtual Private Networks to accommodate the shifts in bandwidth that came from internet traffic in the 1990s. This change helped make it possible for the telecommunications infrastructure to cope with increased use that came with the popularity of cell phones. As the product cycle for cell phones heated up in the late 1990s, this infrastructure was able to cope while minimizing costs.
Similar shifts in the way music was purchased and marketed have come along more recently with the invention of the iPod and iTunes, and with similar consequences; those able to adapt to the new landscape are surviving, while those who prefer the status quo are finding themselves out of work.
How does this relate to cloud computing? All these recent, game-changing shifts in media have come down to one thing; the availability of information, which we’ll refer to here broadly as “bandwidth.”
Cloud computing simply represents the latest push to make the most of existing bandwidth. Google and Yahoo are some of the more obvious examples of how this was first utilized. What changed was that instead of one enterprise with rooms full of machines driving the dissemination of information online, Google and Yahoo began utilizing existing computers on several sites to drive their search engines and provide more and more services.
This trend is continuing now, and is even giving Microsoft a run for its money. The change is rippling wildly, both for enterprises and individual users.
A time is coming when we’ll look back and realize that we once bought all our necessary software in a box which we took home to use on a solitary basis. That is, until it was time to buy an updated version. When that time comes, what will have changed? Plenty.
Cloud computing is allowing millions of users to access the same programs for free, using hardware that’s far away in a server farm. Meanwhile, the enterprises providing all the bandwidth make fortunes daily through a combination of subscriptions and virtual ad space. The rigid structures that once governed the bandwidth and how it’s used are being changed forever.
The result of this change is that users are able to get the information they need, and access the services they want more cheaply than ever.
By shahziab ID 1048440
