The answer is not a bigger computer

The different providers of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) or virtualized computers keep increasing the size of their computers. Each news release offers configurations with more cores and more memory. Bit I think they (and the people who buy the services) are missing the point.

The power of virtualized computers is not in larger computers.

Traditionally in computers, bigger was better. When we had single mainframes managing the data for companies. a larger computer meant faster returns on reports and more powerful analyses. When we had personal computers on desktops, faster computers meant faster computations in spreadsheets.

When the unit of computing is a single device (a mainframe or a PC), then bigger is better (usually).

But with cloud computing, the unit of computing is not a single device -- it is the cloud itself, which consists of a number of devices. A variable number of virtualized devices, actually. Cloud-based systems are not single application programs running on single computers; they are systems of small programs running on multiple servers. The expansion capabilities of cloud are not based on a single computer. They are not based on expanding the processor, or increasing the memory.

Cloud computing expands by increasing the number of computers.

Looking for increased performance through more cores or more memory is not the "way of the cloud". If you have a large process, one that demands lots of processing and memory, then you are not doing cloud right.

Moving to cloud means re-thinking the way we build applications. It means systems assembled from services, not large monolithic programs. Look for the large processes and break them into smaller ones. It may not be easy. Our legacy systems were designed around single-device thinking, and optimized for single devices. To be successful in cloud computing, our thinking has to change.