Weathering the Storm: The Policy Implications of Cloud Computing

Throughout the history of computing, there have been sev- eral paradigm shifts from main-frames to mini computing to microprocessing to networked computers. On track to be the next major paradigm shift is that of cloud computing. While the de nitions are still being debated (see: http://videos. techielife.com/what-is-cloud-computing/video-online/ 2008/11/13), fundamentally, cloud computing can be de- ned as a push in designing services where information is stored and processed on the Internet (i.e., \the cloud") usu- ally via massive large scale data centers which can be ac- cessed remotely through various clients and platforms [18, 2]. Cloud computing itself has often been referred to as a conglomeration of ideas such as Software as a Service, Web 2.0, grid computing, and utility computing [2]. In essence, cloud computing is an umbrella concept which attempts to synthesize and encapsulate this over arching movement of access anywhere, process anywhere while abstracting the en- tire process to the user masking it in the cloud