The Five Faces Of Cloud Computing

1902 Words8 Pages
Cloud computing is one of the biggest innovations of the 21st Century. Moving into 2014, cloud computing remains a big IT trend. It is a broad term that covers any type of computing or storage service that is delivered to users from remote servers. This mode of service has technically been in place for years, with online email services being one common example. As technology has progressed, a variety of services can now be provided from the cloud, such as file storage and the ability to run an entire program without having them installed on your computer. Cloud computing allows for pay-per-use or charge-per-use access to applications, software development and deployment environments, and computing infrastructure. Furthermore, it…show more content…
The early adopters of cloud computing are the federal government and substantial chain retail companies with various pharmaceutical entities adopting a hybrid approach whereby they use cloud computing for non-critical application such as prescription fulfilment and email. Additionally, “many of these early adopters, especially the federal government, have several data centers spread out across the country. They are outsourcing with cloud computing as a means to consolidate without enormous capital expense (CAPEX), moving more of their budget to operating expense (OPEX)”. Even though large companies and federal government adopted clouding computing first; small and medium business should be one to be interested in this phase. Cloud computing allows these companies to use world-class infrastructure without the need of purchasing hardware and maintaining large support teams. “Pay-per-use also gives them the agility and flexibility to grow quickly when demand increases. On the contrary, in case of decreasing demand, cloud computing provides a convenient way to reduce capacity and avoid sunk costs” . Furthermore, this model is especially appealing for start-up companies, because they usually don’t want to make enormous upfront investments, have no interest in building large operational teams, and need scalability to adapt quickly to changes in demand. After the cluster of the early adopters; some opportunistic adopters started to use the cloud to control the
Get Access
Related
Get Access