Skip to main content

Motley Fool : Amazon, The true Cloud Computing Gods!

So, what the heck is "cloud computing"?
Even after reading a 14-page special report in this week's Economist, I still have a hard time coming up with a concise definition. Perhaps the easiest way to understand the basic concept is to think back about 15 years ...

If you wanted to type a letter, create a spreadsheet, or play a game, you'd have to go to the store, buy the software, and install it on your hard drive. And each time you used one of these applications, everything you did took place inside the computer sitting on your desk.

But then the Internet came along.

Oh, brave new world
Nowadays, if you want to watch a video on YouTube, share photos with friends on Flickr, listen to music on MySpace, or post an ad on Craigslist, all you really need is a browser and an Internet connection.

That's because nearly all of the applications we use and all the data we access is now stored on a remote server somewhere out in "cyberspace." And these servers are housed in massive data centers that are all interconnected via the Internet to form a giant computing grid or "cloud."

According to The Economist, 69% of Americans now use some kind of "cloud service," be it Web-based email, online data storage, or online applications such as Google Docs.

Furthermore, businesses are using cloud computing to drastically cut their IT budgets -- hence the explosive growth of enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies such as salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) and NetSuite.


Why VCs are going ga-ga over Amazon's shares:

Putting his money where his mouth is
Gurley told us that he'd just snapped up shares of Amazon.com at roughly one times enterprise value -- in effect, giving him a slice of the cloud-computing pie for free.

Among his reasons for liking Amazon over Google in the cloud-computing space:

  • CEO and founder Jeff Bezos' strategy of being a "low cost operator"
  • Amazon's highly developed cloud computing infrastructure
  • Superior customer service
  • While developers figure out how to best use Google's App Engine, he sees money-making businesses being built on Amazon's Web infrastructure
Fool
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Security: VMware Workstation 6 vulnerability

vulnerable software: VMware Workstation 6.0 for Windows, possible some other VMware products as well type of vulnerability: DoS, potential privilege escalation I found a vulnerability in VMware Workstation 6.0 which allows an unprivileged user in the host OS to crash the system and potentially run arbitrary code with kernel privileges. The issue is in the vmstor-60 driver, which is supposed to mount VMware images within the host OS. When sending the IOCTL code FsSetVoleInformation with subcode FsSetFileInformation with a large buffer and underreporting its size to at max 1024 bytes, it will underrun and potentially execute arbitrary code. Security focus
Post a Comment
Read more

Our frozen chi's and the Workfloor

I left home when I was 20. I had studied Physics(Major) and had no idea what to do next. I took to the seas, I think looking back it was more like a refuge, an asylum. Seeking to get away from all that peer pressure, myself and what not. 1991 June 7, around midnight I arrive in Lagos, Nigeria. Company agent ships me to the nearby hotel to wait for my first “boat”. That's the first time in my life I saw a lot of people , a race totally different from ours. I was warned to be careful, protect my wallet, but they came across as just about any other regular folk. That was my “first encounter”. Funny, since then I have worked with all kinds of nationalities (Japanese, Chinese, Malaysians, Indonesians, Dutch, Scandinavians, Thai, Americans, Spanish, Argentinians,..I can go on and on). What I have learned in all that is that we are all so much alike. But on board a ship it is “ really ” different. Your job is crucial and you must work together. That makes you accept each other realistica...
8 comments
Read more

A Collection of Threnodies : Part 1

Whale Fall ----------------- Dress me up in my new threads clasp my greasy palms grease my hair I'm ready for the fall Watch at all the decadence watching the avalanche I'm slipping down losing my buoyancy What's become of us where have we come this far, this close close to the doors I hear them, sublimal chants I'm on the run I race through the human sea I am the king! I'm the slave to my own undoings I'm the jester in my courtyard We jest as we run We're strolling on that thin rope we grope as we rope we're true heros we're the survivors we're the scavengers we're the friends we're the lovers we're the unbred Soon awaiting the fall we're lurking on us we're osedaxing us we're soon going to be done we'll soon be arrested *osedax(bone devourer, newly discovered marine genus) feeds on a fallen(sunken) whale carcass(which is also called a whale fall). Read more here
9 comments
Read more