Last month we focused on some of the reasons why organizations have taken a slow approach to entry into the Cloud environment but, as promised, this month we are going to focus on how other organizations are benefiting from Cloud Computing and how it could help your organization. Many business leaders view “The Cloud” as something new and mysterious therefore prompting them to take caution. This belief, however, is not really accurate. “The Cloud” is just a new buzzword for something we have been doing for years with solutions such as web-based email (Gmail – 2004), cloud storage (Amazon Web Services – 2002), and other applications delivered over the internet (Salesforce.com – 1999). These early pioneers paved the way for mass adoption we are seeing today. The big question is, why are so many organizations embracing this technology?
Scalability: This is a huge benefit to many organizations, especially those organizations who are seasonal or have frequent shifts in demand. Since Cloud resources are dynamic, businesses can adjust their necessary resources as business demands change, only paying for what they need and use, without a huge capital investment.
Optimization: Most organizations with physical infrastructure are grossly underutilizing their computing resources due to the fact that the applications cannot pool resources. In a Cloud Computing environment this waste is eliminated and there for resources are used much more efficiently. In turn, this trickles down to more cost savings for the organization.
Efficiency: Due to the dynamic nature of Cloud Computing, there is a major reduction in the time to implement new applications or test potential applications. In the past, an organization would need to acquire new hardware, new software licensing, and prepare the machine just to test a potential application, resulting in high costs and long lead times. In the Cloud environment, this time is reduces to minutes and cost is reduced to pennies. Furthermore, this also impacts the development life cycle for new applications.
Redundancy: The definition of this word as it relates to technology differs for each and every member of IT management. But when it comes to the Cloud, it can be a cost-effective way for an organization to gain some redundancies within their infrastructure. The Cloud offers the ability to geographically diversify an organizations computing resources including storage, RAM, CPU, and physical connectivity. Because of this, applications can be spread across multiple locations therefore gaining redundancies, uptime, and mobility.
For these reasons, and many more, organizations are adopting Cloud Computing initiatives at a very fast pace and we will continue to see this market grow exponentially over the next few years as the Cloud providers find better and better ways to delivers applications via the Cloud. If you would like to discuss your Cloud initiatives with us please Contact Us or call 800-557-0663.
