Archive for the ‘utility’ Category
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Three tech giants — Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Yahoo — said on Tuesday they are teaming up on a research project to help turn Web services into reliable, everyday utilities.
The companies are joining forces with academic researchers in Asia, Europe and the United States to create an experimental network that lets researchers test “cloud-computing” projects — Web-wide services that can reach billions of users at once.
Their goal is to promote open collaboration among industry, academic and government researchers by removing financial and logistical barriers to working on hugely computer-intensive, Internet-wide projects.
Founding members of the consortium said they aim to create a level playing field for individual researchers and organizations of all sizes to conduct research on software, network management and the hardware needed to deliver Web-wide services as billions of computer and phone users come online.
“No one institution or company is going to figure this out,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, the head of Yahoo Research who is also a consulting professor of computer science at nearby Stanford University.
Cloud computing has become the industry’s biggest buzzword. It is a catch-all term to describe how Internet-connected hardware and software once delivered as discreet products can be managed as Web-based, utility-like services.
“Potentially the entire planet will come to rely on this, like electricity,” Raghavan said, referring to the push to make everything from daily communications to shopping to entertainment into always-available, on-demand Web services.
“We are all trying to move from the horse driving the wagon to a million ants driving the wagon,” Raghavan said of the need to let computers manage millions of small jobs, adding that the available capacity on the Web would vary widely. “The challenge can be a billion ants one day and a million ants the next.” Continued…
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