How to Make Cloud Computing Work For You

14/02/2012

By Ewan Cameron, Moorhouse


Cloud – what’s the deal?
Cloud computing is ‘IT-as-a-Service’ and consumers buy what they need from a supplier who provides it via the Internet. If you imagine cloud-computing solutions as a block of flats: the water, gas pipes, and wiring are all in place. You then simply rent a room equipped with these utilities already installed and get going straight away...think software or infrastructure or platform in place of these utilities, all provided to you via the internet to whatever device you happen to log onto using your browser. Need to expand? – rent another room.

Immensely successful?...

...- rent a floor. This ‘multi-tenancy’ aspect of the cloud makes it relevant across corporations of all sizes and sectors, all potentially living within the same 'building'.

What are the opportunities for my business?
Changing to a rental business model that uses the Internet to access your IS/IT brings low-cost, mobile, quick to deploy and scalable solutions to the table. With boardrooms firmly focused on optimising the return achieved on capital expenditure and minimising operating costs due to economic uncertainty, this is juicy stuff. So too is the scalable potential of cloud... 42% of respondents to a recent Economist Intelligence Unit survey deemed this to be the key benefit of cloud, and with the importance and pace of organisational change increasing this is hard to dispute.

Another benefit of cloud is the precept that by shifting your IS/IT to 'the cloud', you’re freed up to focus on what should be critical for you - building the business. ‘Yes please’ cry CIOs, so often busy keeping the ship afloat rather than charting new courses that can apply IS/IT technologies to give their companies a competitive edge.

What are the risks?
Yet while there is fantastic potential in cloud, there is also a great deal of... continued on page two >

 

 

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