Turns out they make stock data and the like available essentially via text files or via a simple API application programming interface which will be one of the themes of the course.
An example of an application that does not work well in asimple cloud environment is a shared database, such as the typical Oracle database application, where the information is one big block of data that needs to be manipulated all the time by many computing processes and where access to the shared data needs to be synchronized and managed.
To give one an idea of exactly how bizarre the application of a seemingly simple concept like sustainability has become, consider the proposed Oregon Sustainability Center in Portland.