As the computer industry continues to consolidate, we see denser and denser clusters of computational services. The VM “movement” companies are performing have been making good progress with virtualization. The work load in their server rooms and data centers start to take on different physical and operational shapes. The virtual workloads will shift into the IaaS services provided from Amazon, Dell, Microsoft, VMWare and other acutely targeted offerings.
This consolidation of workloads is good for cable internet service providers. The cloud or IaaS is great for large businesses or businesses that have large on line service profile. The inverse, the cloud is not as ideal for the smaller offices as the problem is bandwidth access to the cloud/IaaS providers. Small offices wont/don’t have large/fast enough connections to the internet for file servers, database servers and application servers to be responsive enough. The slower speeds the small offices typicality have (even 10 MB or 50 MB bi-directional) will make the service uncomfortable for the users and a all around poor operation.
This is where the cable industry can align themselves with the cloud providers. Cable Internet providers can provide GB links between the customers office locations and to the cable internet headends/datacenters. In fact we do this already and often today. (As often as we can get the customers) This is where the magic can happen… that GB link to the headend can solve the “slow” connection to the cloud.
If the Cable Industry teams up with the “cloud makers” we can install/host “fast access” or “local cloud” nodes provided by the likes of Dell, Amazon, VMWare, Microsoft etc. When directly connected to the local cable companies headend the costumers can have the best of both worlds. (Fast connection + IaaS = Happy customers) Allow the cloud customers fast inexpensive MAN/WAN data access to the “local cloud” installed at the headend and then provide traditional speed and billing rates to the larger clouds and general internet. The customer will then have nirvana, well to the best level on this topic.
The Idea is provide/build and bill for the physical access and network access to host these new local clouds. If we aptly call the big clouds provided by Amazon, Dell, VMware etc cumulonimbus clouds, then I’m going call these new small local clouds cumulus.