Cloud computing: What is it?

Every so often a new buzzword hits the industry. Occasionally, the concept is pretty good. Cloud computing is one of those ideas whose time has come -- depending of course upon how it's defined.

What is cloud computing?

For industry old-timers who remember, cloud computing is 2010s version of time-sharing.

For those of you who are not a technological relic of a bygone era, cloud computing is a systems service architecture in which computer resource is provided to you, and you pay for that service, on demand. This model works particularly well with computer processing capability, and within the right parameters, data storage. Cloud computing is particularly useful when your storage and processing requirements change from order to order, or month-to-month.

When cloud computing makes sense.

Generally, cloud computing works better for smaller companies with limited economic resources then for large companies which can buy their own computer resources in bulk.

Cloud computing makes a lot of sense were there are periodic needs four higher than normal computer resource utilization. A very simple example is financial reporting. in financial reporting there were monthly, quarterly and annual reporting cycles. There are probably just as several days during each of these three cycles in which processing utilization and data storage requirements will be particularly high. Let's say that in each time frame there is a three day window in which computer utilization outstrips the average need a large amount. This means that you have extreme computer utilization requirements for 51 days a year. Historically, the company would have purchased enough computing power to handle peak periods. However, with cloud computing, you can pay for that additional resource only when needed. This can be a significant financial benefit to the company.

Ask your self... are there particular Windows in which computer utilization, because of the applications being run, significantly outstrips the balance of the year. If the answer to that question is yes, your application is a candidate for cloud computing.

Cloud computing -- marginal situations.

Data storage and computer processing requirements typically grow linearly, but are purchased in step functions. Cloud computing can be a way to handle linear growth. When your data and/or processing requirements do not yet scale to the size of an economical hardware purchase, cloud computing can be a much more economical way to handle growth. Only when the cloud computing resources become financially balanced with buying the next increment of hardware does the purchase make sense. In this way, incremental utilization due to growth can be made much more economically palatable. You don't have a significant amount of unused resource, for which you've paid, using this technique.

When cloud computing doesn't work.

Cloud computing may not be the most logical alternative for growing organizations were computing resource is growing at a steady rate. Cloud computing can be, but is not designed to be, a permanent solution for increasing data storage and processing requirements. If you need a terrible eight of data online, and it's not likely to do anything but grow, you're probably better off buying or leasing the terabyte rather than using cloud computing.