How they work: “The Cloud Computing (Part II)”

A googol is the large number 10100 (10 to the power 100; that is, the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros; 10,000,000,000,000,0..... ) A googol is the name for the above scenario. Google’s name was derived from its founders’ craving to keep track of the vast amounts of information on the Internet. As the company grew, it began offering more services than just Web searches. Through in-house innovations and acquisitions of other companies, Google created what is now Google Docs, a Web-based suite of applications that includes word processing, a spreadsheet and a presentation program. With Gmail, that puts Google in direct competition with Microsoft for the corporate desktop. And unlike Office, Google Docs is completely free. These hosted services are the kinds of applications that would be at the forefront of “Cloud Computing”, just one reason it would be realistic for Google to be the perfect company for a computer hardware manufacturer to partner with. Google has got a really network of machines, that offer an astonishing computing power. It also offers redundancy (backup) capacity. Google already stores multiple backups of its information on its equipment, and if one part of a machine breaks, it can be swapped out without any loss of data. Using a cloud computer stored on Google’s massive infrastructure would free you from having to take your files with you neither would you require any flash drives, laptop hard drives, CDs, DVDs or other removable media. You could work on your projects literary from anywhere (home, office, on the road etc). With the cloud computing, one most probably wouldn’t have to pay for software. Using applications hosted on the server, your local machine would have only the basic operating system to power it locally. You wouldn’t have to update your software to the next version as that would be taken care of by the cloud server owners. But what would happen to those who are frequently on the move, who have to work as they go? Of course, a cloud computer would require an Internet connection! A number of airliners may not offer onboard internet, but some have plans to offer in-flight access. While on the road, one can use the 3G or 3G plus internet access. You’d also have to be comfortable with letting Google or whomever else, to keep your documents online. Many organisations have rigid policies that prohibit any of their documents getting off their own networks. Would these organisations revisit such policies in order to become part and parcel of cloud-computing or chose to be left behind? One of the bottlenecks in the creation of cloud computing is the amount of electricity required the high-speed Internet access. Google has built its network basing on fibber optic lines and the nearby Dalles Dam that gives them the reliable power they need. Google needs large amounts of electricity to power the cooling equipment necessary to keep thousands of servers running. Their Data Canter is as large as two football fields, buildings hosting the servers, each have two cooling plants four stories tall. These do not only provide the necessary cooling but also consume vast quantities of power. The Servers there in have storage capacities not measured in gigabytes or terabytes but in googols and googolplex (most probably to match the company’s name). eddie@afrowbs.com