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Windley: Mobile Data Centers Matter

Phil Windley has some interesting observations on the usefulness of mobile data centers like Sun's Project Blackbox.

Phil Windley, who blogs at ZDNet and is executive producer of IT Conversations, has some interesting observations about possible uses for mobile data centers such as Sun's Project Blackbox:

When I was Utah's CIO I realized that latency, not bandwidth, was the largest threat to the kinds of services that government and others might want to roll out in the future. We worked hard, with little success unfortunately, to establish regional peering points in Utah. Mobile data centers can help overcome this limitation, at least for the big players. If Google wants to deliver video worldwide, putting mobile data centers in strategic locations will vastly improve the quality of service that their customers see.

Windley also thinks mobile centers could be an asset for Internet companies concerned about Net neutrality. "I don't think this can counter every threat, but dropping mobile data centers in strategic locations can route around particularly obnoxious networks," Phil writes.