Scoop has an Ethical Paywall
Painless paying enables playing in the 'cloud'
Painless paying enables playing in the 'cloud'
By Peter Kerr for sticK
(sticK - 8 March 2011 ) A desktop computer, or a bank of on-site servers can eventually carry out a large task. But many people aren't prepared to wait the hours, weeks or even months that some jobs could take; while simultaneously tying up that computer at the same time.
The cloud, as in web, does in theory have oodles of surplus computing power. Power that theoretically should be available to anyone at the end of a high speed link up but with anything that is just there, reliability and guarantees don’t exist.
Enter the new breed of computer power providers such as Amazon or or Windows Azure, who are now productizing extra processing power yet still are not solving the needs of your average user.
The Internet for most is about paying for what you want, when you want it. One of the problems with accessing this through these simple platform or server farm owners is they often want to charge in hourly chunks, even if a job itself only takes a few minutes. They generally haven’t designed it to be used on small intervals of time.
Naturally, this makes the would-be users of such Internet grunt more than a little bit gun shy about using the remote computing power.
For sticK – science, technology, innovation & commercialisation KNOWLEDGE - is a new Wellington based news service concentrating on following the money from ideas to income. Contact editor Peter Kerr at peter.kerr055 @ gmail.com
Peter Kerr
Message maker
Writer, communicator, simplifier, storyteller.
Versed in the art and science of translating something complicated into an understandable message.
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