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Is Cloud Computing a technology driven wave or a business lead wave of change?
Confusion abounds regarding cloud - from IaaS to SaaS and 'everything-as-a-Service' - not to mention the choice of public or private or community cloud...
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9 Answers
You can’t really have one without the other. There have been plenty of good technologies that failed because they offered no business value. There have also been plenty of business cases that went kaput because the underlying technology was not in place.
In reality, the industry has been talking about cloud computing since the Dotcom boom at the turn of the millennium. At that time, the business case did not make sense because the vendors were simply moving servers from customer sites to their own data centers. Consequently, the first wave of cloud suppliers (Application Service Providers) flamed out in dramatic fashion.
With the emergence of virtualization, that equation shifted. Vendors are now able to put a lot of different companies’ processing load on one (or a few) pieces of hardware. With IT becoming so complex, it makes sense for small and medium corporations to offload the ongoing maintenance of such systems to a third party. The economics (as well as the potential risks) are not as clear with large enterprises.
One ripple effect is the basterdization of the term. Initially, cloud meant off premises. Hardware companies, like HP and IBM, devised the term private cloud to comfort their customers. Whether or not one agrees with the nomenclature, there is no doubt that cloud now has the technical and business foundation, so it is a significant industry force.
The move to cloud computing is mostly marketing-driven, and it's a great way to kill more IT jobs in the 2011 Depression.
Cloud Computing is real - depending on what you mean by "Cloud Computing." A utility based IT consumption of computing resources that are available on demand is a good start. Multi-tenancy is not required (Private vs. Public). The computing resources can be raw compute, storage, or a platform (like CloudFoundry or AppEngine) or software (SaaS). Each level of Cloud is different (IaaS, PaaS, Saas), but having similar characteristics.
Is this technology driven? For sure - the technology has been being built over the past several years from multiple angles. But, the development of this technology is definitely based on a business need: flexible compute resources, aggregation of supply, ability to scale up/down on demand. As these two factors mature - technology and business use case - Cloud matures and will be more important to IT in general.
While much of the noise in the Cloud is about products, that's because it's a major trigger for technology spending and nobody wants, or can afford to get left without a chair. Cloud emerges like many innovations by simply looking at a business or process and identifying the aspects of that service that make customers unhappy. Netflix is such an example, and UPS, in comparison to my local post-office, is another example. The key marketing concept isn't about messaging, so much as about re-imagining a process in a blue-sky way, and then figuring out how to achieve those qualities unimaginable in the present, and those values and ways closely guarded by insiders.
Cloud Computing is really a focused recognition of the real needs of businesses and a real focus on the real technology customer. To achieve the actual service that real customers want, Cloud service innovates by wrapping automation and software around what have inexplicably and for a long time, been manual processes in the datacenter.
And it's interesting that the interest and friction of doing things in an automated fashion have been so profound to say the least of the complacency and timidity of businesses in the face of their own technology organizations. In terms of preferring manual labor to automation consider how much of outsourcing revolves around the need to find people to perform more labor because there's so much work. The smallest viable farms today rely heavily on machinery and automation, yet somehow when it comes to computers, the tunnel vision is such that repeatable automation remained out of reach or on the shelf for years after vendors started peddling it.
Second, the identity of IT Operations group has focused on avoiding risk, avoiding blame, and on management rather than innovation. The application teams write software, the operations teams keep it running. As a newcomer, and a paradigm which invites or may even require a decidedly different world outlook, Cloud exists largely because Amazon.com recognized a stodgy, inefficient industry (not unlike old school book sellers and film studios) and decided to apply Amazon's tried and true approach to shifting the money flows in that business. So Cloud is not about technology, it's about culture. The same blind spots and inertia exist everywhere people exist and the opportunities to improve upon cultural blind spots seem boundless to me. Sometimes people compare the rise of Cloud Computing to the invention of the Container Ship. If you read about how container ships were invented and then introduced into common practice, the stories are different, but the need to shift thinking to focus on the real business goals connects both innovations.
I'm a small business owner. I recently took Google's chrome OS for a spin. (I installed chromium on a usb thumb drive and booted my netbook from that device.)
Everything works fine, but when you're not online, there's nothing there. No offline capability.
I was out of town one day last week, with a lot of downtime on my hands. I have 3g/4g connectivity through my phone, but there was no signal to be found. I had planned on working that day but couldn't. Everything I had planned to do, I had already moved "into the cloud".
The technology isn't there yet. Until such time that cloud computing can be used in offline mode, it is useless to me.
Mike
The technology evolves due to progress in science & sometimes understanding of the basic problems being faced by humans . The cloud computing technology is not something new wonder , but recast of virtualization technique ( I suppose IBM & VAX computers used to do this for memory) to greater scale .The technology provides main ONE thing : consolidation of Resources and better ways to utilize it .
Rest all jargons are to sell this technology to public .. by Big players having spent a fortune in Research.Hence all those marketing hype coupled with security issues.
It is trend and technology which is going to stay and be used . Dont we all use Google , You tube , or ..... They all based on cloud technology.
In my opinion, Cloud is both technology and business driven. However, I feel it is more so driven by the common, yet specific needs of businesses and the different experiences that involved human error. I feel the development of all technology relating to the "Cloud" and its growth as a complete solution is predicated on the feedback of what businesses find they need in order to operate more cost-effectively and efficiently.
Cloud computing is the most advanced form of computing till date. It is based on the robust and fault-tolerant virtualization technology. Cloud computing technology offers tremendous benefits to businesses of all kinds, such as, fast and simultaneous accessibility for multiple users via Internet, high reliability, scalability, infinite storage, robust data backup, economy, and live 24x7 technical support. Thus, technology-driven cloud computing due its enormous benefits to businesses has also become business-driven.
For more information, visit –
http://www.myrealdata.com/cloud-computing.html
The hosting technology has improved significantly and businesses are looking for ways to reduce costs and simplify their massive investment in IT. IT is a necessary cost center.
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