"Let the economics deliver"

By now your grandma will know that the one big cost component in setting up data center is power. Not for computing, for cooling the whirring machines. To get around this, companies have begun setting them up as far as Siberia, so that they can cool server farms by simply throwing open a few windows.

Now Google dips into its vast patent filings and executes a wonder – a floating data center. Yes, a data center that is powered by waves, cooled by water and no property tax to pay because there is no property. It uses a technology called Pelamis wave energy converter that generates electricity into a grid from offshore wave energy. The search giant filed for a patent in February that was approved Aug. 28. The patent outlines a concept that would not only be savvy engineering, but deliver great returns. Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge calls Google’s patent a “startling new take on data center engineering.” Larry Dignan says “I’d call it brilliant engineering, but the financial engineering could be even more impressive.”

Being a SaaS lover and a cheapskate, I would just wait for the economics to deliver ;)
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Can we cope?

“In future the geography of the cloud is likely to get even more complex. “Virtualization” technology already allows the software running on individual servers to be moved from one data centre to another, mainly for back-up reasons. One day soon, these “virtual machines” may migrate to wherever computing power is cheapest, or energy is greenest. Then computing will have become a true utility—and it will no longer be apt to talk of computing clouds, so much as of a computing atmosphere” – says the Economist.

Nick Carr says the journey of the itinerant computer has just started. Any more, I have doubts whether we could cope.

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