A sudden spike in the search volume of the term Cloud Computing yesterday after the announcement of the findings of a report of Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) claiming that Cloud Computing could give EU 763bn-euro boost. I spoke about cloud computing in my Web Prophesies post on July 2008 but for those unfamiliar with the term Cloud Computing is something similar to the electricity grid: instead of having your own power generator you buy power from an utility company. With Cloud Computing you do not need any substantial computer infrastructure since the processing, storage and software are outsourced: With an Internet connection you can "buy" services in the cloud.
If cloud computing will deliver such results by driving down costs and increasing speed and efficiencyis somtheng that remains to be seen. In any case the University of Twente participates in the Cloud Computing Knowledge center Centre4Cloud here in Enschede. This is an initiative of the UT and the Kennispark Twente with partners like Google, IBM and KPN. I will keep to up to date on any interesting news here.
