The intercloud turns computing inside out. With traditional IT, we move the data to where the computing infrastructure is located. With the data volumes in most application areas now growing exponentially, this IT model is now broken. Moving massive volumes of data around means more bandwidth, more storage, and more latency. We need instead to position the computing infrastructure next to where the data is located. With intercloud computing, we can build global apps and services where a single app can operate on data that may be spread across many public clouds and private datacenters. Intercloud computing means less bandwidth, less storage, and less latency.

Intercloud computing is now emerging as a powerful new model for all kinds of data-intensive IT. In order to reach the world's distributed data sets and realtime data streams, intercloud services and platforms will need to be deployable simply and easily on all public and private clouds. Fortunately, the virtualization and standardization that is an essential component of cloud computing is making this possible.

For fifty years we've been moving data to where the computing power is. With intercloud computing, the world is going to look quite different, with the computing power moving to where the data is.