David Deans
How can your company get started with cloud computing? Well, consider following the market leaders. With a few more months of client experience, Forrester Research recently addressed the major questions that executives have about the adoption of cloud services.
Cloud Expo on Ulitzer
The key benefits that most early adopters report do not start with
costs -- but rather with business flexibility. According to those that
have deployed it, the benefits of cloud computing, in order of
importance, are:
Cloud Computing Benefit #1:
Improving time-to-application deployment
Cloud
platforms give you the option of developing and deploying new
applications on existing infrastructure as quickly as desired.
Traditional platforms can take up to three or four months to procure,
install, and configure, stalling the application deployment process.
Cloud Computing Benefit #2:
Aligning IT budgets with application demand
How
many Web applications does your organization deploy without exactly
knowing how popular they’ll be or how much capacity you’ll need to
accommodate that popularity? Many of the early cloud adopters host
customer and public-facing Web applications with cloud providers for
this reason. They can pay just for the resources they use, hour by hour.
Cloud Computing Benefit #3:
Accommodating peaks in demand for data center capacity
Cloud
computing is also good for handling episodic spikes in demand for
computing, storage, and network resources. Rather than provision for
the expected peak of the holiday shopping season, retailers can push
the additional demand into a cloud environment. Big batch jobs also fit
this model.
Cloud Computing Benefit #4:
Delivering applications without raising the budget
Cloud
computing gives you the ability to deliver new applications without
having to buy systems, avoiding an investment of your firm’s capital in
new equipment. Application development and delivery can all be handled
using pay-as-you-go operating expenses.
Cloud Computing Benefit #5:
Sharing without putting the data center at risk
Many
of the early adopters of cloud computing are looking for an inexpensive
and easily accessible way to share information. Medical researchers are
an example. Cloud services enable these organizations to host data on
public clouds, rather than making their internal data center available
to external parties.
Three Questions to Ask a Cloud Service Provider
How do you know if a managed cloud service provider is a good-fit for your business? Forrester concludes that you should ask all providers the following three basic questions:
Source www.businessweek.com
