Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing, + Website

CHAPTER 1

A Cloudy Forecast

The cloud—shorthand for “cloud computing”1—is transforming all spheres of our world: commerce, entertainment, culture, society, education, politics, and religion. Cloud start-ups are forming on a daily basis, and billions of dollars in wealth are being created as companies craft innovative strategies to exploit this opportunity. Conversely, long-standing corporate icons that have failed to do so are becoming history instead of making it.

The concept of a public cloud—shared, on-demand, pay-per-use resources, accessible over a wide-area network, available to a broad range of customers—might appear to be a recent breakthrough, but there is nothing new under the sun, not even the cloud. The ancient Romans implemented the information superhighway of their time, constructing an unprecedented wide-area network with thousands of route miles of roads, called viae, using state-of-the-art engineering, following documented standards.2 The public network, made of public roads, or viae publicae, was complemented by and interoperable with metro networks, the viae vicinales, and private networks, the viae privatae, creating an Internet of sorts. The roads of the Romans carried people, goods, and soldiers, but, perhaps most important, they also served as a communications network, enabling information, coordination, and control of the far-flung republic and then empire.

These viae were multiprotocol networks—carrying pedestrians, animals, carts, military chariots, horses, ...