As our world becomes more and more connected, the terms used to describe online services blur into abstraction. In this article, I’ll clarify the terms “cloud computing” versus “software as a service,” often referred to as SaaS. In some ways, it’s like describing two sides of the same coin. However, there are some clear distinctions, along with risks and rewards to keep in mind. The Internet is increasingly being referred to as the cloud. One […]
elasticity
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When you talk to a bona fide Cloud supplier they talk in the straight-forward, clear and non-technical way about the business benefits of Cloud computing. However, in the same way that two hundred jumbo jets landing safely at Heathrow is not news but one jumbo jet crashing is news, Cloud makes the headlines when it fails and for those who over-complicate it. Cloud computing provides organisations with an alternative way of obtaining IT services and […]
If you came here for the article with the title, “How Cloud Computing Will Change IT”, unfortunately, it has been removed at the request of the publisher of the website from which it was obtained. Asking me to remove it was within their rights, but I believe it was a shortsighted decision based on old media ideas about the copyright “protection” of assets and the imagined potential loss of ad revenue. I am not competing […]
Zynga was created in 2007 with the idea that “play — like search, share and shop — would become one of the core activities on the internet.” Just 5 years later, the company has about 150 million monthly unique users in 166 countries, and has just filed for what could become one of the most important IPOs of 2011. There’s little doubt that Zynga is one of the fastest and most interesting growth stories on […]
As the cloud paradigm matures it is becoming increasingly well understood that companies and organisations of all sizes – from the smallest SME to the largest enterprise or public agency – can realise highly compelling economic benefits by adopting cloud computing solutions. In fact few could now credibly argue that emergence of the cloud model is not profoundly and fundamentally changing the economics of IT. At a macroeconomic level the Centre for Economics and Business […]
High-performance computing (HPC) is no longer exclusive to large companies and governments with substantial scientific budgets. Why? The economics of HPC cloud computing bring these capabilities within reach of nearly any business. However, infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals must realise that the level of ROI varies based on application design, behaviour and use case. Cloud economics let companies pay for capacity when and only when it is utilised, without requiring any upfront investment – essentially […]
2010 was the year “cloud computing” became colloquialized to just “cloud,” and everyone realized “cloud,” “SAAS” and all the other xAAS’s (PAAS, IAAS, DAAS) were all different implementations of the same idea — a set of computing services available online that can expand or contract according to need. Not all the confusion has been cleared up, of course. But seeing specific services offered by Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, Citrix, VMware and a host of other companies […]