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Tech Giants Join Forces For Cloud Computing

  • Reuters, Wednesday, July 30, 2008 12 PM
Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Yahoo are joining forces to create an experimental network that lets researchers test "cloud-computing" services projects that would reach billions of users at once. According to Reuters, "the 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."

In other words, HP, Intel and Yahoo are funding a massive cloud-computing research project, where the goal is to create a level-playing field for conducting that research -- i.e. a platform that doesn't belong to Google, Microsoft or Amazon. As Prabhakar Raghavan, the head of Yahoo Research, says, "No one institution or company is going to figure this out."

Cloud computing refers to the process of turning Internet hardware and software into Web-based services stored on the Web in disparate data centers across the globe. "Potentially the entire planet will come to rely on this, like electricity," Raghavan said. "We are all trying to move from the horse driving the wagon to a million ants driving the wagon. The challenge can be a billion ants one day and a million ants the next."

Read the whole story at Reuters »

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