Isn't it pretty much going right against the current flow of data? Scientific computing is moving away from megaservers to home computers, because home computers are bloody powerful and forming a collective whole their output can make a megaserver/supercomputer look like a motion impaired snail. People don't need to have stuff rendered for them and sent across the planet, it is not only troublesome physically but it is simply uneconomical. It is much cheaper and better for the environment to just use local computing power and only use remote servers for data storage.
To me this is one of those opposite effects, like when it was believed computers would cut down on paper usage (Boy were they wrong.). Apparently as storage and computing power become cheaper and more mainsteam, strangely enough there is a growing demand for a jungle of server farms across the planet connected back and forth in a web that makes people's heads spin. One would think that this was not necessary when you can get 10 TBs of storage space for a month's salary or two.
