今天ReadWriteWeb出了一篇文章，叫做“Cloud Computing Is More Than a Computer in the Cloud”。这篇文章讲了很多关于云计算的现状，很多这个行业专家的意见，以及包含了众多有用的链接，值得一读。

摘几个要点：

1. 云计算在提供计算资源，像集中供电一样集中供应计算之外，又有所不同。计算资源与电网、期望、铁路网之间的不同网络效应(Network Effects)需要区别对待和考量。

“Actually, unless there are some large network effects, quite a lot stops single companies ruling entire industries. For a start, without network effects, economies of scale tend to run out: the curve is usually U-shaped. Telecoms, gas, rail companies have strong network effects from their infrastructure — it makes little sense to have duplicate rail networks or gas networks in a country. Utility computing does not have this advantage because the distribution network is not owned by them.”

“The history of computing has been a history of falling prices (and consequently expanding uses). But the arrival of cloud computing — which transforms computer processing, data storage, and software applications into utilities served up by central plants — marks a fundamental change in the economics of computing. It pushes down the price and expands the availability of computing in a way that effectively removes, or at least radically diminishes, capacity constraints on users. A PC suddenly becomes a terminal through which you can access and manipulate a mammoth computer that literally expands to meet your needs. What used to be hard or even impossible suddenly becomes easy.”

2. 云计算除了提供计算资源之外，更重要的是数据。（Welcome to the Data Cloud ?）

另外，Tim O’Reilly给出了非常棒的描述：

“I want to emphasize one more point: the heart of my argument about Web 2.0 is that the network effects that matter today are network effects in data. My thought process (outlined in ‘The Open Source Paradigm Shift‘ and then in ‘What is Web 2.0?,’ went something like this:

1. The consequence of IBM’s design of a personal computer made out of commodity, off-the-shelf parts was to drive attractive margins out of hardware and into software, via Clayton Christensen’s ‘law of conservation of attractive profits.’ Hardware became a low margin business; software became a very high margin business.
2. Open-source software and the standardized protocols of the Internet are doing the same thing to software. Margins will go down in software, but per the law of conservation of attractive profits, this means that they will go up somewhere else. Where?
3. The next layer of attractive profits will accrue to companies that build data-backed applications in which the data gets better the more people use the system. This is what I’ve called Web 2.0.

It’s network effects (perhaps more simply described as virtuous circles) in data that ultimately matter, not network effects per se.”
(my emphasis)

也就是说，IBM对于电脑硬件的标准化，开源软件和互联网协议的标准化导致了整个行业的变迁，这对于Open Standard的研究是很好的启示啊。那么接下来的世界里，数据就是更重要的资产？谁能在数据上玩出更多花样来谁就是老大？这也跟我前两天写云计算的时候的感觉一样，数据果然是很重要的。这也是很好玩的研究课题。

另外，从实践的角度来看，云计算的三个阶段以及开放源代码对于云计算的影响都是很好的分析，那么接下来是不是会有厂商帮助你在不同的云计算平台上进行数据的转换？因为之前我的担心就是在不同厂商之间转换的困难程度。这里面又有一个问题，厂商可以采取策略把用户锁定在自己的平台上，在有开放平台的情况下，厂商之间的竞争和收益会有什么不同？这个跟前一段时间听的Private Software和Open Source Software之间的竞争以及锁定策略的博弈分析差不多，应该很有意思。