In The Clouds

When I was younger, I used to stay up until all hours of the night trying to figure out some obscure bit of C++ or COM. I find challenges like that fun. However, that doesn't happen very often any more.

But, I was up until 2AM last night with Amazon S3. The concept of S3 is simple: it is computer storage on the Internet. It is priced fairly low ($0.15 USD per GB) and has a lot of obvious applications as remote, reliable storage. I wanted to see how hard it would be to use S3 as a file share (turns out, not too hard).

It isn't just S3, but the whole concept of cloud computing that has me jazzed. As someone who manages systems for a small company and consults for larger ones, I know how much trouble it is to keep them going. I would love to turn all of the low value nuts-and-bolts stuff (e.g. backups, OS upgrades, etc.) over to someone else and just get on with the fun and challenging stuff.

This isn't a new concept. Sun has been saying "The Network Is The Computer" for a long time, but now it is becoming a reality. It isn't quite there yet, but it is coming fast and it will change my job dramatically.