Cloud Computing as a Necessity
Author: Cloudipedia Editor
Technologies become essential when they become a part of the very fabric of society. They become essential when they become disruptive. There are a great many new technologies that appear every year, and many of them are technologies designed to make things simpler, cheaper, and more convenient. Yet, most of them do not fall into the category of disruptive technology—or a technology that results in far-reaching and important changes in the way people work, think, do business, and communicate. Cloud computing is one of those disruptive technologies.
• Cloud computing changes the way we work. The very nature of what a “job” is, is changing. We work from home. We work as contractors. We telecommute, work from on the road, and increasingly, pay no attention to the physical boundaries of the corporate brick and mortar walls.
• Cloud computing changes the way we think. Old barriers are being broken down. We’re no longer afraid to think outside the box, because the box no longer exists.
• Cloud computing changes the way we do business. The collaborative technologies that are enabled by the cloud let us take advantage of outsourcing, focusing on our core goals while letting other experts take care of what they do best on our behalf.
• Cloud computing changes the way we communicate. Is it necessary to get on a plane, or drive across town for a meeting? Increasingly, the answer is no. New types of communication allow us to work closely with partners, remote employees, and suppliers around the world as if they were right there in our office.
There are objections, to be sure. There are objections to any disruptive technology. People resisted graphical operating systems. They resisted cellular phones, the Internet, and even computers as a whole, but each of these disruptive technologies won out, and our lives are better for it.
Cloud computing is fast becoming recognized as the fastest growing technology. Gartner’s “Top 10 Strategic Technology Areas for 2010″ lists the ten most important technologies that must not be ignored—and cloud computing is number one on the list.
Cloud computing is destined to become part of our everyday lives, because it is more than technology. It’s not just software that is delivered from a remote server over the Internet. Cloud computing represents a new way of thinking and doing that has become essential to stay competitive and efficient in today’s economy. Here are just a few of the drivers that highlight why cloud computing has grown in importance so quickly:
• Explosion of data. We are truly in the “information age” today. That means we rely on information more than we ever have in the past, but it also means that there’s a lot of it.
• Renewed focus on collaboration. So what do we do with all of that data? Information is usually more valuable if it is strategically shared, not only within the company, but also with partners, suppliers, outsourcers and other stakeholders all around the world.
• Economic necessity. Companies face the continual need to cut costs, especially during the worst economic recession since the ’30s. But even apart from the recession, global competition and other factors have led companies to embark on major cost-cutting initiatives. This involves both implementing new methods, and cutting staff.
• Entrepreneurial activity. The economic recession has a positive impact on entrepreneurial activity. The result is that there are more small companies today than ever before, and those small companies need access to resources at low cost. Cloud computing allows those small entrepreneurial ventures to gain access to the services they need and flourish.
• Outsourcing. Outsourcing and cloud computing go hand-in-hand. The outsourcing trend is driven by economic necessity described above, and it flourishes because of the intense amount of entrepreneurial activity that we’re seeing, from two perspectives. Many of the small entrepreneurs that are launching their companies today are outsourcing providers. And the demand on the part of larger existing companies for cost-cutting further drives the need for outsourcing. Cloud computing provides the framework for outsourcing to exist.
• Teleworking and telecommuting. Yes, people are working at home, and companies are allowing it, in part out of the effort to keep costs in check. Cloud computing has provided the framework to allow a new era of working at home to become reality.
With so many factors coming into play at once, we’re seeing a “perfect storm” that can have only one end result: Cloud computing becomes pervasive. In every one of the above drivers, cloud computing is what makes it happen.
The evolution of cloud computing
If you’d like to see where cloud computing is going, you simply look at the evolution of earlier computing platforms. In the 1996 documentary “Triumph of the Nerds”, Steve Jobs described his early vision to take the desktop to the masses: “It was very clear to me that while there were a bunch of hardware hobbyists that could assemble their own computers, or at least take our board and add the transformers for the power supply and the case the keyboard and go get, you know, et cetera, go get the rest of the stuff. For every one of those, there were a thousand people that couldn’t do that, but wanted to mess around with programming - software hobbyists.”
Interestingly, today’s cloud infrastructure is similar to the desktops of the ’80s in several respects. Although it ultimately benefits the ordinary end user, it’s mostly the techies that get excited about it and that continue to refine it. The result will be the same. Just as PCs were once seen as something “with potential” but nonetheless only used by a handful of “hobbyists” as Jobs puts it—or “geeks”, to not put so fine a point on it; cloud computing is seeing the same evolution. In the future, cloud toolkits and platforms will make the cloud as easy to use as today’s desktop computer; and will become as ordinary and accepted as the desktop or laptop PC.
So where did the concept of “cloud computing” come from? It goes all the way back to the origins of the Internet itself. The Internet was always seen in diagrams as a cloud, even before the term “cloud computing” came into use. The idea was that, as described by Google’s Kevin Marks, it “comes from the early days of the Internet where we drew the network as a cloud . . . we didn’t care where the messages went . . . the cloud hid it from us.” The internet therefore gave us the first cloud, which centered around networking. Later, data abstraction added another layer to it. Today, the cloud abstracts the entire environment: infrastructure, platforms, and data and applications.
Why cloud computing is already becoming mainstream
Why do people use cloud computing? The Pew Internet & American Life Project noted several reasons: 51 percent of users who take advantage of cloud computing do so because it is easy and convenient; 41 percent do so because of the advantage of being able to access data from any location and any computer; and 39 percent do so because it promotes easy sharing of information. The advantages below all point to mainstreaming of the technology.
• Collaboration
• Scalability
• Better performance
• Reliability
• Simplicity
The last point, simplicity, is perhaps one of the greatest driving forces of the cloud. Let’s face it, there is an element of laziness involved, and that’s okay. Workers everywhere want their jobs to be easier. Cloud computing provides that. Working at home in the past, may have required a user (or the user’s admin) to pre-load software into the user’s home computer, and install special logins for accessing the corporate server. More often than not, that burden just led people to inaction, which resulted in fewer telecommuting opportunities. Cloud computing simplifies the entire process by removing the need for client software and by abstracting the data and application servers. Simply put, if it’s easy, workers will go for it. And in the end, that helps the corporation get things done.
Business users, consumers, and software developers ignore cloud computing at their own peril. Remember when Windows first came out, and there was still a large contingent of people who insisted on sticking with the command-line interface? Those who resist the cloud model are in the same category today. Cloud computing and SaaS is increasingly impossible to ignore.
Why? Everything in computing has led to this moment. Web 2.0 technology first gave us a little taste of what true interactivity and collaboration over the Internet could do for us. While earlier Internet sites gave us information on static web sites, Web 2.0 raised the bar with blogs, social networking, instant connectivity, and a new level of interactivity over the web. Instead of just reading a web site, we could interact with it. We could send feedback. Take polls. Search for products we like, compare prices, and see what other people thought. We could hold web conferences and use things like shared whiteboards. These Web 2.0 innovations put us all in the mindset of free collaboration, unfettered by physical boundaries. Web 2.0 made it possible for the first time to hold a productive conference for example, between people in Chicago, Delhi, and London. We have gotten accustomed to Web 2.0 innovations and cannot go back to the way it was, and we want more. Cloud computing was the next logical step.
Cloud computing has gone mainstream also because of the presence of a robust infrastructure. Virtualization technology has come to the fore, and this too serves a major role in letting vendors deliver SaaS services and in letting companies gain access to infrastructure services without large capital expenditures.
____________________
Original Content by Cloud Computing 101, Cloud Computing Made Easy:
Posted in cloud computing