Clouds without data centers

Today, computing clouds are remarkably similar. Nearly all are built from a few centralized data centers accessed by high-bandwidth network connections. Scalability is achieved by growing these few data centers in size. The “Big Iron” approach. Tomorrow, computing clouds will be more diverse. They will be more distributed. They will be built from intelligently managed collections of heterogeneous resources, which will vary greatly in size and will be accessed through similarly varied network connections. Some initial steps towards this future have been taken. A few network service providers are using their central offices as distributed components for computing clouds. Some applications already make use of computing and storage resources on customer premises. As more demanding applications - such as media-rich applications or time-sensitive telco functions - move into clouds, this trend towards greater distribution will grow.