Cloud computing used to be one of those wispy technical phrases that was hard to define.
Was it a new name for outsourcing? A different kind of computer network? Or just marketing nonsense?
But the overcast outlook is beginning to clear: Cloud computing is a new business that lets you rent computers by the hour, the way you might rent a fishing boat.
Just ask Jim Graham, a 3M technical manager, who has launched a new software business from his St. Paul, Minn., research lab without using any 3M computers. Instead it lives “in the cloud,” which means 3M’s software resides on computers in Microsoft Corp. data centers around the world.
His reason: Cloud computing is an inexpensive way to launch a new business for which demand is unknown. Rather than commit to buying or leasing computers, telecommunications lines and data storage, Graham rents them.
3M’s new business, called Visual Attention Service, lends itself to cloud computing. 3M software analyzes advertising agency photos to help determine, in less than a minute, whether the picture actually directs a customer’s eye to the object being sold. This work has typically been done by experts, but 3M’s automated process is cheap and quick.
But will it sell? Since 3M can’t predict the demand for the service, which was introduced in January, it didn’t want to commit to long-term data center use. Graham’s new business has become a cloud-computing pilot project that the rest of 3M is watching.
If it works, 3M could be one of the first big corporations to widely adopt cloud computing, which so far has attracted mainly small and medium-sized businesses seeking to lower costs. Big companies, which have voiced more concerns about privacy and security, haven’t embraced it.
But cloud-computing providers are pushing it hard.
Besides Microsoft, St. Paul-based Lawson Software Inc. and Eden Prairie, Minn.-based VISI Inc….