A host of providers including Amazon (AMZN), Salesforce.com (CRM), IBM (IBM), Oracle (ORCL), and Microsoft are helping corporate clients use the Internet to tap into everything from extra server space to software that helps manage customer relationships
An article on BusinessWeek.com posts yet another article of the ‘Cloud Computing’ trend in the technology industry. The article points to some of the SAS giants in the industry along with exposing the newer growth trends of cloud computing into, ‘Hardware as a Service’ (HAS?). All these services in their core are “all delivered over the Internet, on demand, from massive data centers”. The article points to Merrrill Lynch’s projection that cloud computing will surge to $95 billion over next three years in the global market. Microsoft (‘Software-plus-Services’), HP, and Dell are already moving forward aggressively to provide such computing in the cloud to its public and corporate customers. In this model a company essecially is outsourcing the physical real-estate, disaster & recovery of data, and maintenance of their technology to third-party. At the onset this may seem scary, but supporters of cloud computing point to the reduction of $8 out of current $10 in operating costs for maintaining technol ogy. They also point to an exponential maturity in relaibility of these technologies. In addition, these technologies provide an a-la-carte pricing model allowing for strict expense control, a very attractive pricing proposition in this economy. The naysayers on the other side, point to various goverance around ownership of data and complication surrounding such, if hosted on third party systems. They also point to the virtual nature of such real-estate and the fact that server clusters maintained by 3rd party could not be under rigorous control as their own. Needless to say this technology is gradually emerging, the enterprise use of this technology currently remain limited to non-vital data systems. In 2009 this one is a very interesting development to keep a keen eye on, especially, heavy hitting companies like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Dell, HP, and Amazon rapidly getting on the band-wagon.
How Cloud Computing Is Changing the World by Rachael King
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