Introduction
What is Cloud Computing? In simple terms, this would refer to the general act of delivering computing as a service more than a product, where shared programs, resources, information, and software are offered to computers among other relevant devices over a network such as internet, but inform of a utility. Cloud computing would describe a new delivery, consumption, and supplement model for IT services that would be based on protocols of the internet. Cloud is a form of modern technology that applies central remote servers and the internet in maintaining applications and data. Gmail and Yahoo email are perfect examples of cloud computing; software or a server would not be required for their usage. Clouds would either be public or privately-owned. A public cloud would market its services to everyone on the surfer while a private cloud would be a proprietary data center whose services would be limited to a smaller number of persons (Buyya, p. 76). Amazon Web Services are reputed to be the largest providers of public cloud currently.
Main body
This process provides data access, computation, software, and storage services that would not require the customer or simply the end-user’s knowledge of the configuration and possibly the physical location of the system providing the services. The electricity grid is a good parallel to the concept I am trying to explain here. The end-users of power would just consume it without bothering to understand the components and the process involved in ensuring that power reaches them in their homes. In the contemporary world, cloud computing plays a great significance in business continuity, among other crucial sectors. To highlight well the concept in this topic, I would like to discuss the operations of ‘OnLive Inc’ a company extensively applying cloud services in the management of its gaming services. This report would exert much concern on the solution adopted by the company in addressing business issues through cloud computing.
While it has attracted a lot of speculation from competitors, the OnLive gaming system has continued to draw interest from fans of online gaming all over the world for its advanced use of cloud computing. OnLive games would be playable on any Intel-based Mac owing to the company’s big reliance on cloud computing, through where applications are made reliable for customers. OnLive normally applies the use of high-end servers, bearing multiple GPUs, and that would employ the concept of algorithms to eschew a compression of linear video; a way that would be too slow for video games that would require high speed to run. Owing to their successful application of cloud computing, OnLive top administrators, Mr. Perlman and Mike McGarvey have managed to sail the company through many crises and would face no big challenge regardless of the hardware used in their video and gaming systems being at their highest points.
The CEO for OnLive, Steve Pearlman, has always been committed, both mentally and physically to bringing the power of online gaming to greater heights. In the year 2009, the CEO together with his team at Olive Inc. would establish a video gaming streaming service that would enable people to play games made of heavy graphics on their PCs. This service, which eliminates the need for expensive gaming machines (computers), would be powered by the company’s massive data centers that would efficiently stream games over the surfer to computers of players all over the world. With this remarkable progress, the CEO, who is no doubt the biggest force behind the outstanding operations of the company is still convinced in taking the company’s operations even further through the concept of ‘Cloud Computing.’ Expansion of the company’s services will enable businesses to run programs such as the programming software of Maya 3-D which could be quite heavy, on all computers.
The unfading effort of OnLive to access customers will no doubt market and diversify the application of cloud computing to further levels. As observed, today’s big cloud giants, kind as Google Inc and Yahoo would have to spare their user data that would be manipulated by a local computer. One major advantage that OnLive places ahead of its competitors with its technology is that it turns a user’s machine into something more of just an input and display machine, meaning more fun with extra features. From his days at Apple Inc, Perlman has had an outstanding experience in the changing technology in online gaming, just what he won’t spare at giving the best for OnLive Inc.
OnLive would require the users of its products and services to download a simple application that directly connects them to its information and data zones. The application is free but users would be required to part with some money to be able to access programs. One observable advantage of accessing and running programs through OnLive is their speed, which is relatively high. The company’s servers are more powerful than any computer being used at home. In this regard, programs would be loaded very fast. The same would happen to other advanced tasks such as animation or graphics, thus sparing users the regular disappointments common with the machines. As the CEO observes and I quote, “Once people are used to our cloud computing, everything else in their world would seem unacceptably slow.”
Conclusion
However, as it would be observed, cloud computing, just like any other success story would have its negative part of the story. Lombardi and Di Pietro observe that to keep costs low, providers of cloud computing would often give their provisions to data servers across the world for efficient distribution of services (p. 23). In this case, cloud users may not be able to precisely tell where their data comes from or who provides it. Some providers of the cloud may not even meet the requirements of compliance concerning security. This is the biggest danger that would be associated with cloud computing for it makes it hard to identify and track unauthorized material or activity. Users may not even get to know when they are using a safe cloud and when they are not.
Works cited
- Buyya, Rajkumar. Market-oriented cloud computing: Vision, hype, and reality for delivering it services as computing utilities. New York: Ieee, 2008. Print.
- Lombardi, Flavio and Di Pietro, Roberto. “Secure virtualization for cloud computing.” Journal of Network and Computer Applications 17. 23 (2010): 16-19. Print.