Cloud computing and hotels

The Financial Times’ blog has a report on the new cloud computing deal between HP, Intel and Yahoo. In an era when green is overtaking just about every industry, cloud computing offers not only an environmental advantage but also savings brought about by better use of infrastructure and real estate. In a nutshell cloud computing could facilitate deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers. And for hotels that could potentially include the PMS and sales applications.

The FT notes that cloud computing is”fast becoming this year’s ‘green data centre,’ if the recent excitement about technologies that allow people to perform increasingly complicated computing tasks over the internet is any guide. Compared with some other recent announcements, however, the cloud computing project announced on Tuesday by Yahoo, Intel and Hewlett-Packard appears to pack a particular punch” While a “world in which companies and people can ‘plug in’ to computing resources just like they do electricity is still a long way off this initiative looks like it could be useful to researchers looking for ways to move beyond the relatively simple tasks that can be performed in the cloud today – like sales force management and other types of productivity applications – to bigger, more resource-intensive processes”.