Small and medium sized businesses usually have the ghost of increasing expenses haunting them throughout the span of their business operations. Businesses all over the world are hard-pressed to find ways to cut costs and shoot their profitability up higher than they did during previous fiscals. Cloud Computing comes in as one of the best (and yes, it's hyped) ways to control costs and also ease the complexity of managing business-critical applications and data.
Looking at the various business models in the cloud computing world[1], Cloud Computing offers a rather intriguing way for businesses to use computing resources, the network and storage services. One of the main reasons cloud computing managed to garner such hype is because of its capability to provide IT services “Just when you need them” and the “Pay as you go” pricing – needless to say, these two factors play out to be big advantages for small and medium businesses strapped for precious cash.
Another advantage of Cloud Computing is the rapid, flexible provisioning and de-provisioning capabilities that allow end-users to provision network resources, computing resources and network storage as and when required, automatically. This avoids expenses that sprout up – much like ugly mushrooms – like system administration, staffing and service provider or vendor support.
Further, Cloud Computing makes itself available over the network thereby expanding the scope of network deployment, over to heterogeneous client platforms like mobile hand-held devices( iphone, blackberry, other smart phones, laptops and PDA(Personal Digital Assistants). Cloud Computing also grants businesses a sense of “location Independence” since a customer has no way to know where the servers are located. Imagine this: you can use storage servers, deploy bandwidth, access external memory, use networks, borrow processing power and also work on virtual machines without really bothering with the installation, upkeep and maintenance of all the infrastructure needed to run these resources effectively.
Finally, Cloud Computing allow businesses to control and optimize resources by deploying features like metering usage of resources[2] – whether it’s active accounts, storage or processing and help administers to monitor, control and whip out reports bringing in an avalanche of transparency both the end-users and the vendors or service providers.
The Hype about cloud computing might seem to be unreasonable. However, according to an article on CIO.com titled, ”Cloud Computing in the U.S Showing Momentum”[3], by Ellen Messmer, Cloud computing is certainly a popular ride to take – the sooner, the better.
Have you taken the ride yet?
[1] Business Models in The Service World[3]CIO.com: Cloud Computing in the U.S Showing Momentum