CLOUD COMPUTING

CLOUD COMPUTING

Business Week (2009) 10/12

CDS special advertising section

Unfortunately there is a five page advertising section that discusses cloud computing in which they expect the reader to know what cloud computing means. So, let’s define it and then discuss the advertising section. By way of example, let’s assume that you are in front of your computer. Nearby is another box that is called a CPU or

Central Processing Unit. In small personal computer or laptops, all of this is contained somewhere inside.

Imagine that you want to do your income tax. To save money, you do your own taxes. However, you need

A software program. It is on a CD and you go out and buy one at one of those stores that sell it. Say it costs

50 dollars. You put the CD in that box called a CPU and then you hit some buttons that are describe for you in the package soft ware program CD. The way you insert it is to push a button and a slide with room for a

CD opens up and then after you push a button, it closes with a CD in it.

Boom! Up comes this income tax form and you plug in numbers and you have done your taxes for the year.

Now what? Well taxes come every year and the government is prone to change tax policy. So you need to go

buy another software program the following year.  In other instances, you may get something that stays

on the hardrive a gizmo inside the computer that stores all the stuff that you have saved.

So where does CLOUD COMPUTING come in? Let’s go back to our example with the taxes. Before, you drove out to the store to get the software package with the CD in it. Then you went through all the steps listed above.

In the end, you ultimately BOUGHT something and INSERTED IT in to your computer, this time; you stay at your computer and go to a specific website. However, this website is special. What it will do is send you all the software that you need through cyberspace. Or you could say they send the income tax format and instructions through the

CLOUDS just to you. If you have ever gotten something on E-bay, you pay for the product. You do

the same thing here. In other words, you RENT the software for say 15 dollars. The software provides those

places to plug in your income tax numbers. Then you finish. You will want to hit save and your work will be

on the hard rive. Further, you will have to print some copies to send to the government. That’s it.

So CLOUD COMPUTING saves money, wear and tear on your car, and old soft ware that can not be

used again. Pretty neat don’t you think?  Now wait a minute, if this CLOUD COMPUTING can do taxes, it can absorb all or nearly ALL

the other work that you have done on the computer. Ain’t that nice? Well,why would you want to do that?

Well these special websites have big servers or something  like storage bins. So if your house burns down, or you are flooded, or a virus rips into everything, this website SAVES everything and life goes on with all that work and information stored in a safe place somewhere else. So it is like insurance.

So to make this even easier REGULAR COMPUTING means, driving, buying, inserting, and then cluttering up your home and maybe your community environment. CLOUD COMPUTING means sitting at your computer

and renting a product that will come to you through the clouds or cyberspace. I don’t know about you but

CLOUD COMPUTING seems to me to be a lot better way of doing things.

So in this section of BUSINESS WEEK, they are telling business folks or their information technologists that cloud computing cuts expenses, expands capacity on the big business computers, and provides easy ways

to get at your information. They also say that you won’t need as many computers and it is tougher to hack

into the system. It is everything a social or private enterprise needs to become even more efficient and productive.