[Chicago] What is cloud computing good for?

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The discussion about colocation and cloud servers got me to wondering about
that technology (again).  Is cloud computing useful for compute-intensive
tasks or is it designed more to address the slashdot phenomenon (quickly
increase the number of outward facing servers as needs arise)?

Can someone point me to some white papers about cloud computing and its
uses?

(Sorry, this is only Python-related in the sense that if clouds turn out to
be good for what I want to do I would run Python programs on them.)

Thx,

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