As others have said, the headline is misleading, and so is the story. However, everyone seems to be missing the point that a 'corporation' doesn't actually do anything. It's the people who are in charge of the corporation that do the things that are liked, disliked or reviled. If we can get governments and the public to remember this, I think a lot of improvements could be made.
LUXURY!!! Where I used to work (another Very Large International Conglomerate), we had a 5 MB limit, yeah, 5 MB, and that was in 2009-2010. And I had to WALK up the stairs to the 3rd floor. And it was 30 below with the AC blasting over my desk...
I know what you mean. I did a gig with a North American electricity supplier, and spent a lot of time in their Ops Center. They had 2 big screens at the front of the room, and about 8 workareas (semi-cicular desks) with 3 monitors on each of them, all the desks facing these massive 2 projection screens. One screen had real-time traffic and weather camera feeds going (why? I don't know, guess they wanted to know how the commute home would go...) The other screen had statuses for some of the more critical servers. Which was also funny, since I was there when one of those servers went from "green" to "red", and 4 pagers/phones went off in the room at the same time, and the those whose phones rang immediately got on the phone and started to troubleshoot, with the big screens all but forgotten.
In short, it's all for show, not really, truly useful...
Yeah, it's genius for the electricity generating companies, they can get the car owner to pay for the fuel to generate the electricity to charge their car.
Quebec is suffering the same issues. Canada established the Canada Health Infoway (https://www.infoway-inforoute.ca/lang-en/about-infoway) in 2001, has spent more than a $1B (CDN) to date, and just earmarked another $500M in 2010. None of this includes the $600M+ that Quebec has spent (let alone what the other provinces have spent) on Electronic Health Record systems...
The Canada Health Infoway is simply a framework and each province is responsible for setting up its own EHR system to link into it (health care is a provincial jurisdiction in Canada) . Overall, it's been a huge moneypit for Canadian taxpayers in most provinces (http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2009/05/27/f-electronic-health-records.html).
All I can say is good luck to the UK in their quest for EHR...
SpeedyDX has is right, it is a complex issue. I would like to add that it shouldn't be this complicated. If we started to think of internet connectivity in terms of a utility model, like electricity, water or natural gas, that should be the way to do it; in other words, I want to pay for what I use, and I don't want to subsidize someone who uses more than I do, nor do I want to leech off of someone who uses less. I pay a one time fee to connect my house/apt to electricity, to gas, to water, and then I pay per kWh, m3 or whatever. I should be able to do the same for internet, let me pay x cents/Mb be done with all this crap.
Yes, this is an ideal, and yes, I don't think this will come to pass in my lifetime, but hey, one can wish.
All we need, more totally useless shit passed off as art going to fill up already overburdened landfills.
What a legacy to leave our kids
Um, have you ever worked for a major corporation? I've worked on and seen the (multiple) data centers for Fortune 500 sized companies from banks, airlines, retail, government, and others. The sheer amount of legacy systems, multiple use systems, heterogeneous realities, political and financial realities... All of these necessitate a 'data center'.
Yes, what was called a 'data center' 20 years ago is certainly not what it is today, nor what it will be in 20 more years, but there will always be a need to centralize a certain percentage of computing resources.
Cloud computing is over-hyped, and for various security, political and financial reasons doesn't fit every business model.
Saliva causes cancer, but only if swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time. -- George Carlin