Page 266 - Using MIS

234 Chapter 6 The Cloud

Virtual
Organization’s Private
Computing Cloud
Infrastructure VPN (other data
VPN stored here)
(sensitive data
stored here)
Public Cloud
Users

Figure 6-24 Cloud Service Vendor
Using a Virtual Private Computing Infrastructure
Cloud (VPC)

In some cases, organizations have obtained permission from regulating bodies to store
even their very sensitive data on a VPC. For example, Case Study 6 (pages 245–246) discusses
FinQloud, a VPC set up and managed by NASDAQ OMX, the owner of the NASDAQ and other
financial exchanges.

Q7 2025?

So where does the cloud go in the next 10 years? Absent some unknown factor such as a federal tax on
Internet traffic, cloud services will become faster, more secure, easier to use, and cheaper. Fewer and
fewer organizations will set up their own computing infrastructure; instead they will benefit from the
pooling of servers across organizations and from the economies of scale produced by cloud vendors.
But, looking a bit deeper, the cloud brings both good and bad news. The good news is that
organizations can readily obtain elastic resources at very low cost. This trend will benefit everyone
from individuals on the iCloud or Google Grid, to small groups using Office 365, to small companies
like AllRoad Parts using PaaS, to huge organizations like NASDAQ OMS (Case Study 6) using IaaS.
The overall size of the cloud is getting bigger too. For example, Google’s Project Loon looks to
seed the atmosphere with high-altitude balloons capable of providing Internet access to previously
unreachable parts of the planet. And Google isn’t stopping there. It’s also making the cloud faster.
Google Fiber aims to give users speeds 100 times faster than the average broadband connection.
So what’s the bad news? Remember that 500,000-square-foot Apple Web farm in Figure 6-2?
Note the size of the parking lot. That tiny lot accommodates the entire operations staff. According
to Computerworld, that building employs an operations staff of 50 people, which, spread over
three shifts, 24/7, means that not many more than eight people will be running that center at any
one time. Seems impossible, but is it? Again, look at the size of the parking lot.
And it’s not just large companies like Apple. In 2014, every city of almost any size still sup-
ports small companies that install and maintain in-house email Exchange and other servers. If
SaaS products like Google Grid or Office 365 replace those servers, what happens to those local
jobs? They’re gone! See Collaboration Exercise 6, page 244, for more on this topic.
But, with computing infrastructure so much cheaper, there have to be new jobs some-
where. By 2025, where will they be? For one, there will be more startups. Cheap and elastic
cloud services enable small startups like the football player evaluation company Hudl (www.
hudl.com) to access CDN and other cloud services for next to nothing, a capability that