In the FT article, Berners-Lee acknowledges the challenges of breaking through with a new paradigm in a climate where companies have vested interests in maintaining their data ecosystem.
But, today, many IT services can be "run in the cloud" for pennies on the dollar (think email, storage, power to process large chunks of data, etc).. Basically, this means that nonprofits can pay a smaller fee for a service that maintains their data in a secure environment that they can access via the web, from wherever they want.
Due to these features, members of collaborative groups are able to maintain their own data sources independently, while providing a unified access point for all of the data generated by their project.
Big websites usually maintain their own "data centers," banks of tens or even hundreds of thousands of servers, all passing data back and forth to field users' requests.
And while most companies still maintain their own data centers, the promise is that instead of making costly investments in redundant I.T. hardware, more and more companies will tap into the utility-computing grid, piggybacking on the infrastructures of others.
Besides these sources, large pharmaceutical companies maintain their own data collections originating from in-house HTS screening campaigns and drug discovery projects.
Thus, the rest of the users in order to withstand bandwidth competition also accept to be charged with higher prices, so as to maintain their achieved data rates.
The question I ask CIOs is, "Do you have situational awareness?" They maintain their own data centers and what we call a "private cloud".
BUZZ: Exporters will now be able to build and maintain their own data, saving time and money because the company rolled out a catalog, which sets up private, password-protected online catalogs for sellers.
