I want to say one word to you. Just one word. “Plastics”

This was how it was in the movie “The Graduate”. Now the word is “Cloud”.
There I was listening to a presentation by CSC researcher Doug Neal on the cloud when it struck me. This, and all the other new, disruptive technology advances that are happening and being reported in blogs like this are overtaking even those of us who are looking out for it. The pace just keeps accelerating.
When I was in primary school I was told I had to finish grade 10 to get a good job. There were still people then leaving school at 13! So when I got to Grade 10 you had to finish year 12. Then you needed a degree. So I did all those things – then thought I’d try to overtake the trend and so I got a PhD. Too Late! Everybody worth their salt has one of them. Don’t know about business – better get an MBA – did that too. This is how it is with technology too, you will never be able to catch up!
So why is the cloud important to the mining industry? Right now because it can help you to take some cost out of the business – so it is absolutely worth a look. Later, because having made the investment there are benefits to all sorts of other things that might arise. The cloud can help you reduce your carbon footprint – better use of capacity by cloud providers = less energy. Later, the ability to ramp up and ramp down fast will mean you can cover peak usage times without having a whole lot of infrastructure that gets used once a month for a few hours.