Sunday, December 05, 2010

Cloud computing

I have spent part of the weekend reading "Cloud Computing" by Christopher Barnatt. The basic idea of cloud computing is to run many applications on giant data servers hosted by big companies, such as google, rather than on your own computers.

Gven that I already use many cloud computing servies such as google docs and indeed this blogging site, I didn't really learn that much. Many of the cloud computer ideas were around in dot-com era, but the time was not right then. Now with broadband and 3G these techniques are more practicable.

I did see people pushing cloud ideas a couple of years ago, but it wasn't clear to me that they would take off. What I did gain from the book was that, these tools are great for small businesses. There is a lot of software for doing things like payroll.