Cover Image
QR Code

Fighting Physics: A Tough Battle.

The article discusses the software-as-a-service (SaaS) option that companies use to save money and simplify corporate computing infrastructures. The author indicates that the Internet's routing infrastructure and the laws of physics affect the levels of performance associated with SaaS. Other topics...

Full description

Published in:Communications of the ACM Vol. 52; no. 7; pp. 60 - 66
Main Author: SMITH, JONATHAN M.
Format: Article
Published: Association for Computing Machinery Jul2009
Subjects:
Distributed computing
Cloud computing
Cost control
Routing (Computer network management)
Physics
Speed of light
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Summary:The article discusses the software-as-a-service (SaaS) option that companies use to save money and simplify corporate computing infrastructures. The author indicates that the Internet's routing infrastructure and the laws of physics affect the levels of performance associated with SaaS. Other topics include limitations that engineers face when developing distributed applications, the combined impact of the speed of light and the physics of distance on a distributed application, and network hops with which software engineers should be familiar.