A Good Day for Clouds

It looks like cloud computing has hit the mainstream: Newsweek.com has a Q&A with Paul Maritz, CEO of virtual machine software vendor VMware. In the interview, he touts the glories of cloud computing, the latest HPC trend that lets users operate virtual compute nodes and store data through pay-per-use service plans offered by Google, IBM, Amazon, and others. And even though a large portion of VMware's business strategy rests on the hope that cloud computing really does take off, Maritz manages to quell the hype and outline some of the real challenges when it comes to implementation. "How do you operate at this scale, how do you make things essentially bulletproof in terms of reliability, security and privacy. Those are tough things to do...Companies have to learn that as they go forward. This is why this world isn't going to leap up into the cloud tomorrow," he says.