Recently when I was in Las Vegas for HP Discover1 I realized that the Venetian/Palazzo complex is really a cloud: Vegas as a Service. IT could learn a lot from Las Vegas, actually; I think that each hotel complex is a private cloud, and that taken together the strip is one big cloud. Granted it is a cloud that has a single purpose, but has all the earmarks of a good cloud.

Let us look at Las Vegas as a Service using the NIST definition of a cloud:

  • On-Demand Service

Las Vegas provides many on-demand services. All the tables are available upon demand, just walk up and sit down and begin to play. If shopping or food is your preference, they are available as well. You ‘demand’ a service, and it is available.

  • Broad Network Access

Las Vegas has access to many networking technologies. There is an efficient flow of data around any casino, and the users can also make use of the network as needed for their own purposes, such as social media.

  • Resource Pooling

Every table is an available resource, and each person sitting at the tables is their own tenant. The casinos are making the most of table placement. In this case, the vital resource is the number of croupiers and tables available, so they pool these resources to serve up to an efficient number of players.

  • Rapid Elasticity

As demand rises more, more tables are opened, and in some cases, the croupier is already waiting for tenants to show up at their table. So not only can they rapidly provision a new table, they have ready spares waiting to go.

  • Measured Service

A casino hotel measures everything with an eye to ensuring that the players have an enjoyable time, but also to ensure that they are optimizing their own bottom line.

There you have it: Las Vegas is a cloud built with many private clouds within it. I would go one step further and say that the Vegas as a Service concept is a community cloud with a common goal: to ensure monies spent and made in Vegas stay in Vegas. Now that the SuperNap is allowed to host online gaming (one of the only approved sites in the US for this), there will also be an online version of Vegas, a true IT-based Vegas as a Service. In fact, all of the Venetian/Palazzo Complex is run on HP Cloud System Matrix, so while Vegas itself is a cloud, it uses cloud technology to keep the IT aspect of it running.
1 HP paid for my trip to HP Discover and this concept and thoughts came out of that trip