Intel Stuffs Cloud Data Center in Box Small Enough to Fit in a Suitcase

Posted 07/07/2011 at 6:14am | by Paul Lilly

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Intel on Wednesday showcased its latest cloud technologies with "the world's smallest cloud data center" demonstration tool. It's essentially the cloud stuffed into a box, that itself is small enough to be packed away in a suitcase, though we don't imagine actually doing that would be good for the hardware inside considering the lack of ventilation and all.

Why the emphasis on such a small data center? According to Intel, 2.6 billion people and more than 25 billion devices will access the Internet by 2020, the same year online traffic is expected to reach a zettabyte (or one million million billion bytes, if you will). Now is the time for companies to start deploying cloud computing initiatives, Intel says, and the Santa Clara chip maker is all too happy to oblige.

"Using its 'Cloud-in-a-Box' demonstration tool, Intel showed technologies that will deliver a more secure, energy efficient cloud that can be deployed faster than ever before," Intel said in a statement (PDF). "Cloud computing is powered by data centers, and the vast majority of these data centers are powered by Intel Xeon processors. In essence, the cloud runs on Intel Xeon processors."

The pint-sized cloud computer is part of Intel's Cloud 2015 Vision designed to help businesses implement cloud computing solutions that are federated, automated, and client-aware.

Image Credit: Intel