21.Jul.2008 Cloudcamp 2008

Cloud computing refers to applications and computing services hosted on the internet. The Cloudcamp event extolled the virtues of this system as well as potential pitfalls associated with it. A number of speakers spoke on the subject representing a variety of interests in the subject and the main points to come out of it were:

• The potential and power of Cloud computing need to be harnessed now
• Small startups can leverage the services to compete with extablished larger competitors
• economies of scale achieved quickly and easily
• reliability and speed
• startup costs low
• scalability can be achieved easier and paid for during spikes of activity as opposed to all the time in anticipation of spikes in activity

The Concepts of Grid computing was introduced as well as Cloud computing

• Grid computing qas described as computational power on demand. It seemed as though benefits of grid computing were that apps could be designed on the desktop and could then be moved to the cloud without having to worry about scaling

Obviously there would be downsides to cloud computing of which the following were mentioned

• You do not have total control over your data – as it is housed eslewhere
• Can you rely on backups
• what do you do if there are outages?