So here's a question: Which IT sector accounts for fully 25% of the industry's
year-over-year growth and, if the same growth trajectories continue, will generate
about one-third of the IT industry's net new growth by 2013? The answer is Cloud
Services, according to research firm IDC. Cloud computing is garnering its fair
share of industry buzz as well. Its promise of revolutionary cost savings and
agile, just-in-time capacity has driven IT organizations at enterprises of all
sizes to build cloud deployment strategies into their plans.
The Benefits of the Cloud
Cloud computing is immensely popular with companies and government agencies
in search of revolutionary cost savings and operational flexibility. According
to industry research firm IDC, cloud computing's growth trajectory is, at 27%
CAGR, more than five times the growth rate of the traditional, on-premise IT
delivery/consumption model.
Cloud computing practitioners cite numerous benefits, but most often point
to two fundamental benefits:
- Adaptability: An enterprise can get computing resources implemented
in record time, for a fraction of the cost of an on-premise solution, and
then shut them off just as easily. IT departments are free to scale capacity
up and down as usage demands at will, with no up-front network, hardware or
storage investment required. Users can access information wherever they are,
rather than having to remain at their desks.
- Cost Reduction: Cloud computing follows a model in which service
costs are based on consumption and make use of highly shared infrastructure.
Companies pay for only what they use and providers can spread their costs
across multiple customers. In addition to deferring additional infrastructure
investment, IT can scale its budget spend up and down just as flexibly. This
leads to an order of magnitude cost savings that wasn't possible with 100%
proprietary infrastructure.
Other benefits of the cloud include collaboration, scaling and availability,
but revolutionary cost savings and the almost "instant gratification"
offered by the agility of the cloud will be the key contributors to adoption
of the cloud.
What is the Cloud?
So much has been written, advertised and discussed about cloud computing, it
is appropriate to define the term for common understanding. Cloud computing
generally describes a method to supplement, consume and deliver IT services
over the Internet. Web-based network resources, software and data services are
shared under multi-tenancy and provided on-demand to customers. It is this central
tenet of sharing - and the standardization it implies - that is the enabler
of cloud computing's core benefits. Cloud computing providers can amortize their
costs across many clients and pass these savings on to them. This paradigm shift
in computing infrastructure was a logical byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access
to remote and virtual computing sites provided by the Internet.
-1-
Print this article
Email this article
Talk Back!
Write to Editor
