You can’t blame businesses who are wary of any new “buzzword” technology. They’ve been burned several times by previously hyped solutions that failed to live up to their billing, and sometimes caused more problems than they solved. Cloud computing is one of the latest discussion trends and not only do businesses find the term somewhat ambiguous, they are wondering if it will really be the next big thing, or, is it just superlative fluff?
First, let’s talk about what cloud computing is, and of course, what it is not.
Cloud computing is based on the concept of a network of computers who can share resources, information or software on demand. Although the idea for this type of computing has actually been around since the 1960s, the advent of the Internet, along with recent high speed bandwidth, has made cloud computing a reality. The “cloud” refers to the fact that resources are shared from online locations, and is really a metaphor for using Internet accessible computing.
“Cloud” computing is meant to be a simple, abstract way to describe the large scale resources that are available through the Internet’s already existing infrastructure. Millions of lines of data cable, thousands of servers and millions of internet addresses are too much to list in detail, and the specific servers exchanging data may be dynamic. Therefore, it is much more straightforward to simply refer to this gigantic network as “the cloud”.
As an example, let’s say you are a business that is putting together a huge fashion show in New York, and you want to be able to stream live footage from the show. Consider that while your business may already have an online, highly trafficked website, it may still crash if millions more people suddenly flood the site. Worse still, the streaming of video creates massive new amounts of data for your servers to process and transfer.
Beefing up your servers is one option, but it is a costly one, especially for what may be a one-time-only event. After the fashion show has concluded and your traffic levels return to normal, you would still have the large, mostly unused server space on hand.
But with cloud computing, the resources are provided “one demand”, much like an electrical grid provides power as needed. This means that your company can purchase server processing power and storage as it is needed, and only as it is needed. In the previously mentioned example of an industry show, as more traffic started arriving, the cloud would simply provide the required processor and server space, and your bill only reflects the amount of space actually used.
This is where businesses need to start really taking notice. The ability to scale up and scale back down in a nearly instantaneous manner provides an incredible advantage and helps manage costs. As more online usage focuses on video distribution and the large amounts of streaming data, any business attempting to leverage those media without taking advantage of cloud computing will find it hard to stay competitive.
Businesses who rely on heavy reporting or number crunching will find the cloud an excellent solution as well, particularly if the heavy data manipulation only occurs at specific intervals, such as the end-of-month processing.
So, the question is, will businesses move everything to the cloud?
The caveat to the move to cloud computing is that not everything should be on the cloud. The very nature of the cloud’s interconnectivity means that putting things like your company’s sensitive data into a cloud based resource should be carefully evaluated. It would mean that not only would your data be stored outside your own corporate network, but if the network connection is lost, your business would have no access to your own data. This does not mean the solution is out of the question, but it is a major risk to evaluate before moving any data into the cloud.
Businesses who use the cloud for pure computing power or online applications will be able to utilize cloud computing better than companies who attempt to put all of their resources into the cloud. It is true that some companies have gone so far to eliminate buying any servers at all, relying solely on cloud based resources. Only time will tell if this is a truly workable solution.
One thing is certain; the power and flexibility of cloud computing will allow businesses to manage their technological capacity needs much better in the future. Any business who does not research the options may find themselves suddenly losing ground to competitors based on cost savings alone.