Cloud Computing – A Business View

So, at the end of the day: What’s Cloud Computing? If we “google” Cloud Computing, we will find several flavors and standpoints about same thing. But I have been noticed all of them are too technical. And I tightly believe the late for a mass adoption of Cloud in the companies is exactly the lack of a Cloud´s Business definition that would help companies’ owners, managers and CFOs to fund and manage migration or acquisition. Hereafter we present you three definitions (a government standards institute, a big cloud player and an IT research and advisory company) that shall to help us rather than understand clouds, make it more business-friendly and further take advantage of it in our business.

According NIST (US National Institute of Standards and Technology) cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of:

• Five essential characteristics: On-demand self-service, Broad network access, Resource  pooling, Rapid elasticity and Measured service;
• Three service models: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS);
• Four deployment models: Private cloud, Community cloud, Public cloud and Hybrid cloud.

Gartner defines cloud computing as a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to external customers using Internet technologies.

For IBM cloud computing is a new model of consuming and delivering IT and business services. It enables users to get what they need, as they need it—from advanced analytics and business applications to IT infrastructure and platform services, including virtual servers and storage.

That means money. Everything exposed above means save money. And nowadays saving money and cutting costs is the top priority for any business on any market sector. And that’s not only for large or global enterprises. The cloud computing benefits will be more perceived and most quickly by SMB companies. I tightly believe the more small a company is the more benefits it can take from Cloud Computing.

You’re an entrepreneur and want to start a new business. You probably have to create a website to show and sell your products or services. Or even have to develop new software to support your business demand. You’re just getting start and maybe do not have much money to invest. So, what can you do? How Cloud Computing could help you?

Imagine a world where you can host your website and have all infra structure necessary to run it in a place where you simply don’t know and for sure don’t mind for you. Because, what you need to know is your website infrastructure will be there to be used and consumed as you need. Your concerns can be narrowed and your efforts can be focused in your core business and does not matter what the cloud is doing to support your sales. You no longer need a room or IT team engaged to support your services.

As well as if you need new software or maybe escalate capacity to receive incoming requests from clients or even make your site available to receive tens of millions of simultaneous access and be able to close deals during a seasonable period.

You can get and order all these services when you can and when you want by using Cloud Computing services.

Office tools, project management tracking tools, servers, storage, software applications for any sort of business and whatever you need from IT to support your business you can find in the Cloud.

And the worth here is you will have a SLA to guarantee services and you are paying for a service tailored for your business needs.

This article is an update of one that was first published here in TI Especialistas in November 2011.