Chapter 4
Plug Yourself into the Cloud
Social networks are expanding exponentially, everyone is dispersed and mobile, armed with remote control smartphones and acting as CEO of their personal brand that must be marketed online. It leads to this phenomenon: We are collectively plugging into the new digital workplace of the twenty-first century . . . the cloud.
The name cloud itself suggests exalted and open status, and the cloud certainly does take our lives, our relationships, and our collaboration to a new level. But what is this cloud anyway?
After a long period of design divergence, large-scale computing is collapsing into a small set of accepted standards. And just like the electrical grid, standardization is driving down cost, increasing accessibility, and—in making complexity disappear—allowing us to plug in to computing as easily as we might plug in to a power outlet.
Four Key Technologies
Four key technologies are being standardized—servers, networks, data storage, and software. Companies are increasingly building their data centers in exactly the same way that every other company does including companies dedicated to providing Internet services. There is a dominant design that has emerged in data centers.
With servers, it's the x86 architecture that has won, pushing all manner of other servers out of the way. Where once the data center had an array of different shapes and colors, now it is filled with rack after rack of entirely interchangeable parts.
The network has ...
