What It Is
Simply put, cloud computing describes using servers and storage (computing) operated by an external provider in an off-premises data center that you access over the Internet (cloud). That's it in a nutshell.Cloud computing is sometimes referred to as grid computing or utility computing. However, these terms define a more specific computing architecture.
What It's Not
Several blogs and articles have defined cloud computing as a synonym for the services it delivers. But contrary to these opinions, cloud computing is not SaaS (software as a service), SOA (service oriented architecture), Web 2.0, or open source. These services may be delivered or used by the cloud computing model, but are not synonymous with cloud computing.How To Use It
How can we use cloud computing to add value to IT operations and our business? Earlier I said cloud computing is not Web 2.0, SOA or SaaS. However, these services are examples of how cloud computing is used to deliver value to businesses.Top candidates for cloud computing services include:
- Messaging (email, chat, private calendar)
- Company Intranet (dashboard, services catalog)
- Collaboration (wikis, shared docs, shared calendars)
- Backup & Recovery (workstations, servers)
- Applications (CRM, ERP, ITSM)
Email SaaS Example
An example of cloud computing is hosted email. For example, Google Apps Premier Edition provides email and calendaring services that can potentially reduce costs compared to hosting your own email/calendar services.When you host your own email/calendar server such as Microsoft Exchange, you'll need an experienced systems administrator to manage the server to keep it running smoothly and safely. With a hosted email service, the service provider manages the server. Instead of using your expensive systems administrator resources, a less expensive email account administrator can manage the service.
The Google offering is $50 per year for each user account. For a typical 200 user company, that's $10,000 per year. What does your in-house email server, software licensing and systems administrator cost?
Benefits
As noted above, a big benefit of using cloud computing services is reducing the cost of IT resources by moving your server and storage requirements to the cloud. This can result in lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO) of IT services.Another benefit is that service providers do a great job of providing highly available, reliable and protected services. They use state of the art secured data centers with redundant power, cooling and communications to ensure maximum availability and reliability.
Since it's their core business, service providers typically do a better job of managing servers and storage than their customers. It's just a matter of economy of scale.
Risks
Of course there are still risks to consider when using cloud computing. First, your Internet connection is critical to using cloud computing services. Although an Internet outage can severely impact the business, you can mitigate this risk by deploying redundant Internet connections and eliminating single points of failure.You may also need to rethink your backup and recovery strategy to ensure you always have access to a backup of your information stored on the service provider's systems. However, most service providers do a great job of backing up their customers' information.
Another issue is information confidentiality and privacy. Some companies feel their data is only safe if it resides on their premises. I think this is more of a cultural or emotional issue since service providers often do a pretty good job of protecting customers' data—sometimes better than the customers can do themselves.
Conclusion
I hope this provided a little clarity on the cloud computing conundrum. What are your thoughts on cloud computing? Are you using it in your company? If so, let me know what your biggest issues are.By Harry Hiles, HBH Technology LLC — 25 Jul 2008
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