Will cloud computing transform IT?

Technology allows access to seemingly limitless power, storage

By ANDREA JAMES
P-I REPORTER

For a business, the electricity that flows from an outlet seems endless. And water will stream out of the tap without worry -- businesses pay only for what they use.

· Firms fueled by cloud computing

But computing power hasn't been so seamless. Data storage hardware can accept only a finite number of bytes. When businesses enter into monthlong server contracts, it takes days to add more capacity. If usage surpasses a server's capacity, it will crash.

Cloud computing, the super-hyped tech term of the moment, aims to change that.

Cloud computing, utility computing, Web 3.0 and grid computing are all jargon to describe a simple concept: Access to seemingly limitless computing power and storage space via the Internet.

If you use Google's Gmail service for e-mail, you've touched the cloud.

As of Monday, millions of Gmail users had 7,045 free megabytes of e-mail space each -- more than enough to store more than 7 million plain text e-mails.

That's the triumph of cloud computing. The downside, however, was illustrated one day last week when Gmail suffered an outage, and millions temporarily lost access to their e-mails.

Read more here.