One of the most emergent technologies out there is the rise of cloud computing. It is something that I’m working on in seeing how our College can embrace it. A lot of stuff that we use is out there “on the cloud.” The most popular is Facebook. There are a lot of computers that power the Facebook servers and enable you to hit “refresh” every 5-10 seconds.
If one uses an online storage service like Apple’s MobileMe or Amazon’s S3, then one’s files are said to be stored “on the cloud.”
In non-technical terms, cloud computing is computing resources that are distributed on a network. Here’s a better definition from Educause:
Cloud computing is the delivery of scalable IT resources over the Internet, as opposed to hosting and operating those resources locally, such as on a college or university network. Those resources can include applications and services, as well as the infrastructure on which they operate. [source]
There’s an interesting debate happening on The Economist‘s website, economist.com. With any emerging technology, there are those who are quick to jump on its bandwagon and there are those who are cautious and not so keen to adopt that technology.
It’s a debate that I’m going to follow in the coming days and I’ll have their arguments summarized when the debate finishes in the coming week. For now, why don’t you join in the debate by clicking here.
-Edward Jensen