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Cloud Computing Article by Krish Khambadkone
Krish Khambadkone is a Client Architect at Infogain with over 18 years of experience in architecting and building systems. He is currently focused on Middleware and SOA integration both at the Strategic and Tactical levels, mainly in the areas of SOA evangelization and governance. |
A few topics have been crying for attention lately and chief among them is Cloud computing. This is a very interesting area and is only going to gain momentum and grab a lot of headlines in the coming weeks and months.
From a consumer perspective, the Cloud is ethereal. The experience remains the same—with the caveat that there should and will be additional services available to consumers as Cloud computing proliferates, giving the SMB community a lower cost alternative through which to extend their offerings.
From a provider’s perspective, a Cloud is several things and most of all it is the erasing of the boundaries between Software, Application, Server and Storage. It is a Virtualized world on steroids. There will come a time when you no longer think of these as their individual physical instances but rather as spare computing units that are available for use. In effect, you are optimizing server utilization by pooling their resources through virtualization.
Typical Use Case Today (Public)
The Cloud presents an incredible value proposition across the spectrum. Startups are increasingly adopting this as for many it is a no brainer—the path of least resistance. Zero investment in infrastructure with everything provided for through an Infrastructure As A Service (IAAS) model in the Cloud environment.
CIOs from all kinds of IT outfits are beginning to gravitate toward the Cloud and what started out to be a minor tropical depression is now a full blown hurricane. This is evidenced by the increasing numbers of Cloud computing vendors, starting with Amazon (Elastic Compute Cloud) and Google (Google App Engine). There are several other offerings today including those from Salesforce.com and Intuit. There are also several startups operating in stealth mode that will soon come out with Cloud computing offerings.
With the onset of Cloud computing, there is a big paradigm shift underway; instead of developing a web app in your IT center, you will be developing a Cloud application to be deployed in the Cloud.
Proliferation of Cloud Environments Future State (Private)
With increasing adoption, the day is not far when this technology will be commoditized with even open source offerings. Though it is currently the preserve of only the biggies, every IT organization however small is also realizing the benefits of this technology and a lot of vendors are busy building Cloud Computing solutions. Soon it will be the purview of the masses.
Hang on to your seats, it is going to be a roller coaster of a ride.
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