Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing, + Website

Summary

Time is of the essence. For financial firms, time is money, and even a microsecond can make a difference in the race to complete a trade. But in virtually any interaction on the Web, time is important. For hedonic activities, such as streaming movies or playing games, slow response time can impact the perceived quality of user experience. For utilitarian activities, such as those of knowledge workers, slow response time can impact labor productivity. In the experience of online retailers, response time is directly correlated with revenue.

Strategies for response time improvement in the cloud and on the Web match everyday experience. Speed up local processing, reduce distances and round trips, and parallelize where possible. In the next few chapters, we look in depth at leveraging parallel processing and reducing network latency.