The Case for Cloud Computing
In the situation of commercial enterprise software packages, the readily available software have usually been extremely involved and costly. They require a corporation in Henrietta to invest heavily on capital expenditure to build an in-house data center with offices, temperature controls, electrical power, dedicated computers, storage disks, and network bandwidth. On top of all this costly infrastructure is the requirement for a complex software stack for the application. Even after the software has been written, you will also must have a staff of specialists to install, configure, and run the software. But that was before the introduction of cloud computing.
A simple instance of cloud computing is email supplied without software installation from providers such as Microsoft's Hotmail or Google's Gmail. One doesn't need to install any software or acquire a centralized server to be able to make use of them. All an organization requires is just an internet link so the clients can begin issuing emails. The server and email management software is entirely on the cloud and is completely managed by the cloud service provider such as Microsoft, Yahoo, or Google. The consumer gets the use of the software and experience the advantages.
Cloud computing is so capable and inexpensive that a much admired investment research blog has just called it the "$59 computer." Of course there is not really an actual product called the $59 computer -- it is just a general term to refer to the basic idea of cloud computing being so affordable that using it can reduce your company's processing expenses to the point where your overall costs would be comparable to spending just $59 per computer user.
One crucial point that quite a few IT departments overlook or misjudge is the T1 Line Service requirements for carrying out cloud computing. In a recent report, the chief information director of a insurance firm said she had to increase the company's network capacity by a factor of five when they switched to another vendor's cloud computing product. This is not a rule of thumb for everyone, but it's a good example of what a single company implemented. If you are preparing to migrate to a cloud computing solution, do yourself a big favor by initially talking about your bandwidth needs with an independent T1 line consultant who can give you all your available options such as Gigabit Ethernet service.
