Cloud Computing Growing Massively Why?
According to a recent article on the BBC News Website "Cloud Computing has been an information technology buzzword for many years. Now it is going mainstream". The example they use is Rentokil Initial which had 40 different email systems across 50 countries for 20,000 employees, with another 15,000 staff offline. To set up a customised Worldwide infrastructure would have been very high cost. They decided on a "cloud" solution, rolling out Google's enterprise email across the company. It's saving Rentokil about 70% in expenditure, with lower support costs on top of that.
The BBC article notes that Cloud Computing claims five key benefits:
• Cheap: your IT provider will host services for multiple companies; sharing complex infrastructure is cost-efficient and you pay only for what you actually use.
• Quick: The most basic cloud services work out of the box; for more complex software and database solutions, cloud computing allows you to skip the hardware procurement and capital expenditure phase - it's perfect for start-ups.
• Up-to-date: Most providers constantly update their software offering, adding new features as they become available.
• Scaleable: If your business is growing fast or has seasonal spikes, you can go large quickly because cloud systems are built to cope with sharp increases in workload.
• Mobile: Cloud services are designed to be used from a distance, so if you have a mobile workforce, your staff will have access to most of your systems on the go.
With Cloud Computing information technology becomes a utility, consumed like electricity, water, or even outsourced serviceslike cleaning.
Right now, the cloud computing market is worth almost $2.4bn, says Gartner and predicts that by 2013 this will have grown to almost $8.1bn.
Get ready now and map your company's IT needs, says Chuck Hollis chief technology officer at information management company EMC. "If IT is your company's differentiator you may want to keep it in-house." But most IT is just another service that "can go the same way as other corporate functions like finance, logistics and manufacturing".
So come and talk to ITPS to see where cloud computing can help your organisation.