Pay as you go delivery system

Cloud computing is a term used to describe a paradigm for delivery of computing services on a pay-as-you-go basis. Users utilize the internet and remote data centers to run applications and store data, thus eliminating the need for in house hardware and software. The cloud technology allows efficient computing by removing most of the upfront cost of establishing an IT infrastructure.

Sounds promising! But wait – we are not used to having someone else dictate, manage, and maintain our data as well as infrastructure. For corporations, there may be intrinsic risks, confidentiality issues, data security, and other potential areas of concern. The advantages of using the cloud, however, seems to outweigh all the potential negative components. In today’s economy, the biggest motivation perhaps is the cost savings that a company can enjoy using the cloud, therefore, cloud adoption is growing at an increasing rate each year as more and more corporations realize its potential. For Instance, 2013 future of cloud computing survey conducted by North Bridge Venture Partners reveals that “business driving cloud adoption in everything as a service era”, and that “The survey reveals that business is driving the revolution deriving clear benefits from cloud adoption in the form of continuous innovation and business agility to yield competitive advantage. That growth is consistent with forecasts from GigaOM Research, which expects the total worldwide addressable market for cloud computing to reach $158.8B by 2014, an increase of 126.5 percent from 2011”.

Having said that, it seems like cloud computing, despite its inherent security and data risks, continues to grow at a higher rate. During the last decade, the phenomena of outsourcing businesses processes that may be redundant within an organization is also on the rise. The cloud offers you the best available human resource you require for your business at considerably low cost. Again, cost savings for corporations. In one way or the other, reducing costs play a major role in ascertaining the opportunity cost of adopting cloud computing technologies. Among others, the important factors that drive organization to seamlessly adopt cloud computing technologies are:

1. Many technologies in Grid Computing and Web 2.0 are mature enough to simply complex processes while maintaining and delivering high performance capabilities over the web.
2. Physical reduction in hardware such as servers, along with server maintenance and personnel costs.
3. Electricity, and operational costs
4. Elasticity, closely related to agility and adaptability, allows corporations the flexibility to select amount and size of data to store in data centers, and allows for dynamic computing power.
5. Pay-per-use option, making costs variable for organizations
6. Higher Return on Investment (ROI)
7. Going Green
8. Virtualization is one of the core characteristic of cloud computing, and the use of Virtual Machines (VM) and VM Consoles enable enhanced flexibility through routing, aggregation and translation. Additional advantages include, ease of use, infrastructure independency, flexibility
9. and adaptability, and location independence

The barrier and hurdles that remain in the face of cloud computing are primarily the security and privacy issues associated with it. As rules and regulations become invariably stringent relating to protection of data and developing higher standards of data encryption may mitigate risks, allowing for faster adoption of cloud computing technologies.

By Syed Raza