3. 3Tera Inc. – Before You Reach the Stars, You Need to Get Through the Clouds

2010 offers a lot of new innovations and exciting products in the technology field.  However, rather than focusing too much on looks, ergonomics, and other style inflationary attributes, companies have to look for efficiency and cost effectiveness.  Look… CEOs across the country are looking at their market forecast, and its cloudy.  But hey, clouds are good, especially for companies looking to update their IT infrastructure.  Enter Cloud Computing.  I’ve spoke of this software engineering concept before, but I’m sure we’ll begin to see more Cloud-Computing applications this year as companies look for cheaper ways to expand bandwith, data-usage… basically anyway they can work faster, harder, stronger, and cheaper.  Don’t worry if you’re not too familiar with Cloud Computing, I’m still getting acquainted with the concept.  But for now, all you need to know is that Cloud Computing is like renting storage and data from datacenters, almost dynamically to fit the needs of a company as their usage expands and contracts.  It’s almost like utilities for computing.  Think of an electricity utility grid.  Everyone shares electricity, and you access it via powerplants all over the country. 

Amazon is probably credited for pioneering Cloud Computing, but a relatively tiny company called 3Tera Inc. is drawing a lot of attention from the big boys.   Why?  Because they’re trying to standardize Cloud Computing, much in the way you see the WWW standardized, or for you electricians how the IEEE is standardized.  Of course, just as Sony didn’t want Blu-Ray technology to be standardized, Amazon doesn’t want to either for fear of losing customers.  Very interesting… 3Tera bossing Amazon around?  Lol.  Regardless of how things settle, just know that whenever you have arguments over standardization, then you know that the product is new and is in demand.  Hint:  $

Anyway, since you can’t buy stock in 3Tera Inc, just keep an eye out and wait for them to go public.  I’m just speculating here, but it’s hard not too when you’re head is in the clouds.  In the meantime, I believe Google’s old server provider, Rackable Systems, now known as Silicon Graphics Internation (SGI) on the stock market (trading near 52-hi), is  a good way to invest in Cloud Computing.   You may not know it, but you may already be exposed to Cloud Computing.  If you ordered from Amazon.com then you’re supporting it, and if you use Google Apps like me, then you’re exposed to it.  Shoot, it’s everywhere.  Probably the biggest application that Google plans on using Cloud Computing is in their “Google Voice” project… Google’s version of Skype.  (Uh oh, look out mobile phones!).  As a graduate of computer science, I’m excited to see the development of Cloud Computing… to think, that 5 years ago we haven’t really discussed it in class, and now it will be something for the professors to talk about.