If you have it a truck brought it. This is a popular saying among the trucking community and one that is very true. Nearly every item purchased in the United States reaches consumers on the backs of trucks. With another Black Friday in the books in which retailers saw record numbers of online visitors it’s easy to think that someday the digital age will make all forms of physical existence pointless but as the Amazon Snowmobile points out we are still have some way to go before we take up residence in the cloud.

As much as marketing gurus want you to believe the cloud is an eternal place existing free from the limitations of earth nothing could be further from the truth. Our modern internet relies on hundreds of thousands of datacenters across the country jammed full of servers that reliably store your cat and truck show photos. If for some reason you need to move this information from one datacenter to another you have a few choices. One, you can simply upload to a different location using the internet. Depending on how much data you have this could take weeks, months or even years.

Or two, you call the Amazon Snowmobile which in reality is a 18 wheeler hauling a rugged shipping container. Backing up to the door of your datacenter this truck plugs into your network and downloads the required information in a fraction of the time it would take to transmit via normal methods. Once done the fully contained truck packs up and heads to the new location where the download takes place. I never dreamed there would be such a need for a service but clearly there is. And I’m in the IT business! Check out the video below to catch a glimpse of the truck or check out this Wired article to learn more. Thanks to Dave for bringing this to my attention.