In 2010 computing is shifting from local resources into the clouds.
Dan Peterson is RIESTER’s IT Director. This post discusses the shift to cloud computing which is Internet-based computing, where “shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand.”
Lately there has been a lot written about what cloud computing is, is not, and what it will be. Like any new technology, early adopters attempt to gain a competitive advantage. But economics drive widespread adoption, and today with costs dropping, the migration to the cloud is accelerating. Cloud-based services also often come with added features and benefits.
My head has been in the cloud for quite some time. It just wasn’t called the cloud five to ten years ago. The hype of the day then was SAAS (software as a service) and ASP (application service providers). I was hooked after we deployed our first SAAS product, SPAM filtering. From then on I would ask questions like, “Can we do this through a web browser? Why do we need another server? Can’t we find a service to do this for us?” I didn’t want to build it if I could rent it or pay per use.
Noted technology writer Nicholas Carr makes the case in his book The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google that we are experiencing a paradigm shift in how computing resources are consumed and delivered. Carr, a former Harvard Business Review executive editor, coined the term World Wide Computer to help define the shift from in-house and personal computing resources to Internet based services.
Carr argues that widespread adoption is driven primarily by economics. He draws a parallel example between the electrification of the United States in the early 1900s and the shift to cloud computing today. Early power plants were isolated and local. As the early electrical grid matured, and it began to make economic sense, industrial electric users began to shut down their internal power plants and started to buy power from the grid. A critical point is that adoption didn’t occur until larger power companies could deliver power cheaper than what it cost local entities to produce their own power.
Enterprises have been building their own data centers (power plants) to deliver computing resources (power) to the business. These data centers are individually owned, maintained and run by the business, usually at considerable cost. Cloud-based services are starting to replace in-house data centers because it’s becoming economically viable. There are other issues that also hinder cloud adoption. Security, compliance and regulation have been hurdles of various heights to market segments like healthcare, finance and government. But those issues are being aggressively addressed and the industry has made great strides. Evidence is the ever growing use of cloud services in the public sector. But the true driver of adoption is still economics. When decision makers see that money can be saved, the other issues quickly get resolved.
The combined use of cloud services and virtualization of in-house servers is a common strategy enterprises and governments are using to reduce costs. This strategy also has an overall “greening” effect. As organizations consume more cloud services, their in-house data centers become smaller. As more users are served with less hardware in a shared cloud environment, the result is an overall a smaller carbon footprint.
At RIESTER, we use various cloud services, including: Google Apps for email, calendaring, and contacts; online backup of laptops and file servers; and virtual servers for testing and production. While all of our moves to the cloud have resulted in cost savings, most also have included feature enhancements. Examples include laptops we can back up from anywhere, video chat, super fast server turn-up, and many more. And who knows what the future holds? If you asked me three years ago if we would be backing up a terabyte of data online I would have told you our Internet connection was too slow and it would cost too much.
The shift to the cloud is having profound effects to our core business as well. The prolific new social media channels that are now available to individuals, organizations and marketers, almost all live in the cloud. These channels include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, other video delivery services and many blogs.
I am looking forward to Mr. Carr’s newest book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, it is the newest download to my Kindle. Carr is always a provocative prognosticator and an insightful analyst.
Read more from Nicholas Carr at his blog.
