Cloud computing is unleashing some serious power at our finger tips. If carefully planned you can scale ad deploy just about any technology scenario you wish. It takes time to put together the configuration and test out to make sure it scales properly. Once done you can tackle many tasks that used to take days or weeks. Such as:
- Mass Document Creation
- Mass Emailing
- Bulk Image and File Manipulation
- Data Creation and Cleanup
- And much more.
Think of this in terms of global espionage, monitoring, terrorism, hacking, and new ways of conducting or controlling business. You have huge amounts of computing power at your finger tips within minutes.
I could launch several Amazon EC2, Google Apps, or other utilities and applications built in the cloud for any amount of time I wish then close up shop and move on. Take a snapshot of the data or whatever your goal is and leave minimal trace.
Another area of the potential of cloud computing and security to think of.
In the past someone could hack your server and use it as part of their network. Now someone could hack your cloud or just utilize the cloud and take care of business.