BANFF – Remember back when many students had to share one computer in the school computer lab? That soon evolved into just about one computer for every person. And the future will see one person having access to a multitude of computers.
At least that’s what Schematic chief strategy officer Kurt David Kratchman and Amazon.com senior web services evangelist Jeff Barr predicted at a panel on digital distribution for the next generation on Saturday at the NextMEDIA conference.
Amazon.com is a pioneer in cloud computing. In other words, the company allows other people to tap into its vast hardware network to buy data hosting and other services that require a vast infrastructure of computers and all other connected devices.
“Companies can purchase as much of the cloud (of networked computers) as they need for as long as they want and they pay as they go,” said Barr.
Barr cited the example of the 52 broadband steams of Olympic coverage that are to go live and be archived for 16 days around the Beijing Games. Imagine the spiking that will take place during the event, he said. It would be costly to set up the infrastructure to allow that to happen for a two-week event; instead the computer capacity could be purchased through a cloud computing service for the time period it’s needed.
Toronto-based idée inc. tapped into Amazon’s service when it introduced its new Tin Eye search engine application.
“We weren’t sure how many people would sign up and use the service, so instead of building our own farm of servers, we purchased network capacity from Amazon,” said idée chief executive officer Leila Boujnane in an interview with Cartt.ca. “If we need more capacity, we can get it; if we don’t we can turn it off. It gives us flexibility.”
Idée fingerprints images, and then uses software to track where those photos end up on the Internet for clients, such as large entertainment companies, wire services and stock photo companies, as well as individuals.
The company owns 400 servers in Toronto, but doesn’t have enough capacity to upgrade to new services such as Tin Eye or to up the number of images indexed from half a billion to 10 billion by year end as it plans.
Boujnane said clients can pay Amazon anywhere from as little as $10 to $50,000 a month, depending on what services and how they are used.
“The moment we’re paying too much to Amazon, then that’s when we’ll look at getting more of our own technical capabilities,” she said. But she noted that idée already has in-house infrastructure expertise, which would be costly for some other companies to develop.
Another company that uses the cloud is podango, which refreshes its entire inventory of podcasts once a day – which causes a spike for a couple of hours each day. Podango increases the amount of cloud they pay for during the spike period.
Other Canadian companies that have used the Amazon cloud are Vancouver-based AppSpin and Toronto-based Enomaly. Developers are also using it as they work on new projects.
Barr cautioned that there were some issues, such as net neutrality, privacy and security, around cloud computing.
Cloud computing is a low margin, but high volume business – which Amazon is used to dealing with in other segments of its product line, noted Barr. “In 15 years from now, cloud computing is going to be interesting and exciting,” he added.
Amazon may have pioneered cloud computing, but other companies have moved into the space such as Google (Apps 101), IMB (Blue Cloud), Microsoft (Live Mesh), Yahoo, and Salesforce.com.
While social networking is changing the face of the web, another major shift is happening behind the scenes. The Internet is moving from being a global communication platform to a global computing platform.
Norma Reveler is in Banff this week covering NextMedia and the Banff International Television Festival.
