The Evolution of Cloud Computing
The Evolution of Cloud Computing
The latest in a long line of industrThe Evolution of Cloud Computingy trends to try and redefine the way IT services are delivered to the market, cloud computing is an emerging phenomenon. It is a way of delivering business ready applications in the form of software and new infrastructure.
This latest shift in the way that IT services are delivered is changing the industry and subsequently is changing the way that customers and vendors are taking their services to market.
So what is cloud computing? Industry analysts Gartner defines cloud computing as ‘a style of computing where massively scalable IT enabled capabilities are delivered to customers using internet technologies.’
So firstly and most importantly cloud computing is a means of delivering services, not delivering components and hardware. This new model of delivery has several advantages, firstly quick and simple implementation, in conjunction with this sits a payment model based purely on usage and not on hardware and physical assets.
Secondly, massive scalability, paying for the use of virtual assets enables an easy and cheaper way to expand your IT assets; scalability here is partnered with the idea of flexibility.
The concept of scalability is often mentioned in the same breath with cloud computing, and many definitions of include the idea of massive scalability; however it is elasticity that is important to many businesses.
Scalability is the ability of the cloud to expand to support the needs of the customer, elasticity is the ability to support those needs over a large or small scale environment as needed. The vital function of an elastic environment is the ability of the system to scale in both directions without causing any disruption to the business model.
New Methods of delivery
With this emergence of new methods of delivery comes a new step, the ability to deliver services as well as infrastructure virtually. Companies can now choose providers based not solely on what can be offered in conjunction with virtual services, rather than just on how infrastructure is implemented and maintained. The choice of businesses is now do they choose a company to host a platform from which to launch a certain service, like a booking system, or whether they choose to contract with someone who offers that booking system to them as a virtualised service. This offers a alternative to the licence based on site model that has previously dominated the industry in recent years.
Software as a Service (SaaS) or as it has come to be known has much to offer the industry but has yet to be fully embraced by everyone as the central method of delivering all IT services.
Emergence of complementary services
The recent boom in cloud computing has led to the development of several complementary services being born. Each of the following solutions is a new service that owes its existence to the emergence of cloud computing.
SaaS:
This model of software deployment is designed to enable the provider to licence an application to customers as a service or to upload the application on their own web servers,
The sharing of licenses helps reduce investment and it also reduces the need for investment in hardware and maintenance
Cloud platforms:
A cloud platform is a means of gaining programmatic access to web based capabilities that act as the means of to create a complex application or process.
Utility:
This refers to the usage of online based computing and storage services on a metered payment scheme, as if you were paying for any traditional public utility service. The advantage of this is a minimal initial costs and elimination of the need for hardware assets. This model is also easily scalable and simple to provision, meaning it offers a simple means of expanding your computing assets without the need for further investment in hardware.
Grid:
A grid is a collaborative collection of resources owned by multiple companies that is organised in order to help solve a common set of problems. This model is also applied to separate divisions of the same company, most commonly grids are used in either the data grid or collaborative grid models.
Real – Time Infrastructure
Real time Infrastructure (RTI) is a system shared across customers or businesses where policies and SLA’s, drive the optimisation of systems to help reduce costs, whilst simultaneously increasing business flexibility and quality of service. This method of service orientation and optimisation for multiple customers is a true cloud computing service for infrastructure.
Conclusions
The evolution of cloud computing is still in its infancy, however it is evolving at an incredible rate. The full potential of the uses of cloud computing have yet to be realised and it will take a while to fully mature. What is clear though that this new way of delivering services is beginning to reshape the relationship between vendor and customer.
Vendors selling IT technologies will begin to shift onto platform and cloud based systems, and start to make cloud based services the central tenant of their marketing messages and products. Traditional sellers will be forced to change their model quickly or risk being left behind as their customers migrate to cloud based services.
Cloud computing is not just the latest fad of the internet generation it is one of the first emergent technologies that has bridged the divide between internet as a means of communication and the internet as a means of reliably delivering services to the market. As such, cloud computing is a serious emerging business trend that will continue to grow in both scope and significance.
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