Find a copy online
Links to this item
bvbr.bib-bvb.de Inhaltsverzeichnis
Find a copy in the library
Finding libraries that hold this item...
Details
| Material Type: | Internet resource |
|---|---|
| Document Type: | Book, Internet Resource |
| All Authors / Contributors: |
Nicholas G Carr |
| ISBN: | 9780393062281 0393062287 |
| OCLC Number: | 154706854 |
| Description: | vii, 278 p. ; 25 cm. |
| Contents: | Burden's wheel -- The inventor and his clerk -- Digital millwork -- Goodbye, Bill Gates -- The White City -- World Wide Computer -- From the many to the few -- The great unbundling -- Fighting the net -- A spider's web -- iGod -- Flame and filament. |
| Other Titles: | Rewiring the world, from Edison to Google |
| Responsibility: | Nicholas Carr. |
| More information: |
Abstract:
Reviews
WorldCat User Reviews (1)
as incontrovertible as geometry, but...
Nicholas Carr's The Big Switch describes the emergence of cloud services, drawing parallels between information technology and the development of the electric power grid a century earlier. There's no question that his argument is compelling - one need only use Amazon Web Services'...
Read more...
Nicholas Carr's The Big Switch describes the emergence of cloud services, drawing parallels between information technology and the development of the electric power grid a century earlier. There's no question that his argument is compelling - one need only use Amazon Web Services' EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute) service, which offer the ability to house Windows and Linux servers in the cloud - and only pay for storage costs and the time that the servers are online. Compare that to the current corporate and government IT infrastructures, which are marked, as the author notes, by low utilization rates and high ongoing costs.
This quote from chapter 3 is central to Carr's argument: "most of the software and almost all of the hardware that companies use today are essentially the same as the hardware and software their competitors use...the same goes for the employees who staff IT departments" (57). In the library automation area, it's this fact, plus the opportunities that shared data offer, that makes the move of library management systems to the cloud a compelling option. OCLC's Web-scale Management Services offering, which is available for early adopter use, is the first concrete effort in this area.
I wish the book gave greater attention to the pressures that tend to counter cloud services, such as the protecting privacy and the need for control over data archiving. This is where the electrical grid metaphor face and it's easy to underestimate the institutional momentum that favors locally-based services.
- Was this review helpful to you?
Tags
All user tags (2)
- cloud computing (by 1 person)
- utility computing (by 1 person)
- 1 items are tagged withcloud computing
- 1 items are tagged withutility computing
Similar Items
Related Subjects:(18)
- Computers and civilization.
- Information technology -- Social aspects.
- Technological innovations.
- Internet.
- Informatietechnologie.
- Technische vernieuwing.
- Economische aspecten.
- Sociale verandering.
- Cultuurverandering.
- Tecnologia da informação.
- Computadores.
- Inovações tecnológicas.
- Ordinateurs et civilisation.
- Technologie de l'information -- Aspect social.
- Innovations.
- Technische Innovation.
- Soziokultureller Wandel.
- Unternehmen.
User lists with this item (26)
- Books at Home(48 items)
by ericbodwell updated 2012-10-05
- Reading Currently(93 items)
by elfgreen updated about 3 days ago
- Things to Check Out(266 items)
by Tom_Hunt updated about 2 weeks ago
- Books I want to read(42 items)
by jeffwong updated 2013-02-27
- Recommended Non-fiction Books(40 items)
by garret updated about a month ago


