Cloud Computing, the industrial revolution

Date: 21-11-2010
Author: Bit Software

Cloud computing has disrupted the venture capital industry in a big way. One of the changes can be observed is the reduction of capital expenditures required to start a new business. Where before you needed expensive servers and an army of people to maintain them, now you can call to Amazon Cloud and the problem resolved without fuss.

Over-capacity of a cloud, while an underestimation of the cost to people, may seem a bit misplaced for many conservative type managers. But the trend, globaly, is to migrate to the cloud, and not to your own servers. And, from this perspective, the financial benefits are not insignificant. And, after all, the essential role of a manager is to lower costs and increase profits.

Cloud computing is not a new technology

Kevin Jackson, director of Cloud Services at NJVC, an information technology (IT) solutions provider supporting the federal government and the United States Department of Defense founded in 2000, said in one of interviews with Robert Duffner that „the first misconception is that cloud computing is a new technology”. „In my mind - he said -, cloud represents an evolution of technology that combines things like virtualization, SOA, mobile technology, and mobile infrastructures. It blends them together into a new model for consuming and delivering information technology.” From his point of view, cloud computing is more a business model, an approach, and a technique than it is a technology. And the first thing that's important to understand is that cloud computing is not new technology, but rather using and leveraging existing technology in novel ways. „This is an inevitable transition that I sometimes liken to the industrial revolution. There, society went from an environment where products were handmade in cottages to assembly lines powered by the steam engine. That was a revolution not just in society but in the economy and many, many different domains. What we're seeing with cloud computing is the exact same thing, except it's for information technology. It's the next step in the information revolution”, he said.

The future is the cloud's business

David W. Cearley, Research Vice President and Gartner Fellow, said recently, on his research „Cloud computing key initiative overview: „Enterprises that use public cloud services can potentially save money by leveraging a provider’s elastically scalable, variably priced environment. However, public cloud computing also raises concerns about security, data management, trust, control and performance.” In his opinion, few enterprises will abandon on-premises models, but most will move toward private cloud computing models.
Kevin Jackson believe that in the delivery of IT systems, we're going to be transitioning from system integrators to service integrators, and these services are going to be delivered by multiple clouds: private clouds, public clouds, community clouds, and, may be, industry clouds.

„You will have services that are designed and optimized for specific verticals, and an information technology provider would need to understand not only what its customer needs are, but what services they will have to integrate in order to support all of their customers' needs”, said the director of Cloud Services at NJVC.
Most of those involved in the phenomenon of cloud computing considered that the next three years are crucial in the development of cloud computing, and the biggest problem will not be the softwares but the reluctance of companies, which should be convinced that the future is the cloud's business.

What is, after all, the cloud computing?

Cloud computing - with the significance of "Internet computing" - is a modern concept in the field of computers and informatics. Cloud computing requires an immense and complex network of servers, which will provide users with both storage and computing power and programs with normal Web browsing devices. This way, costly investments in equipment and IT staff will be eliminated. Cloud computing allows companies to achieve tremendous computing power via Internet, without being forced to invest in infrastructure.

The optimum circumstances for deploying cloud computing

In view of the Gartner`s specialists, Cloud computing is a complex and rapidly evolving concept. To reduce confusion and focus enterprise efforts, consider these points before beginning an investigation:
1. Understand how cloud computing is defined, and how it will evolve. This will enable you to understand when, where, how and why enterprises should exploit public cloud computing services. It will also help you understand the optimum circumstances for deploying cloud computing.
2. Evaluate which cloud-computing models, architectures, technologies and best practices to adopt to implement private cloud computing services.
3. Analyze how cloud computing will affect the strategy and direction of IT and your business.
4. Analyze which vendors, markets and industries the cloud-computing phenomenon will transform.
5. Make a choice.

Share

Archive

more...