HP, other tech giants assess cloud computing

The trend toward cloud computing may be revolutionizing the tech industry, but it isn't happening overnight.

While tech companies have been rushing to offer cloud-based services — applications and services that are provided over the Internet — there are still plenty of unexplored uses and unresolved technical challenges, according to executives at Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Yahoo, who met at HP's Palo Alto campus Monday for a status conference on their efforts to create a "test bed" of large data centers around the world.

Major computing centers in Russia, South Korea and Malaysia have joined the effort, HP announced Monday. In addition to Intel and Yahoo, other partners include academic and government research institutes in the United States, Singapore and Germany.

The effort, known as "Open Cirrus," serves as a massive computer laboratory for researchers who want to test various configurations of hardware and software and see how they can deliver large-scale computing services to Internet users around the world. Other big tech companies, including IBM and Google, have also launched "test beds" to conduct their own cloud-related research.

Many consumers and businesses already find it convenient or cost-effective to use Web-based e-mail, business software applications and other computing services delivered over the Internet, from data centers in remote locations. But Russ Daniels, HP's chief technology officer for
cloud services strategy, said those services still represent only "a small percentage" of the world's total computing workload.

As that percentage grows, Intel Vice President Andrew Chien said, the trend toward cloud computing could spur both the creation of more big commercial data centers and new applications and hardware for end-users — the individuals who use personal computers and mobile devices to access data and services from the Internet.

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Source: San Jose Mercury News
By: Brandon Bailey