Cloud computing and the economy
In his latest The Wisdom of Clouds article, James Urquhart examines the link between the economy and cloud-computing.
Apparently, the idea is that tightening budgets have opened the minds of enterprises everywhere to the possibilities of cloud computing. That, in turn, seems to suggest that IT is somehow cheaper when run in cloud models.
That may or may not be the case, but I think the concept that the economic recession is driving interest in cloud is off the mark. What is driving enterprises to consider the cloud is ultimately the same thing that drives start-ups into the cloud: cash flow. Cash flow and the agility that comes from a more liquid “pay as you go” model.
Great article here! Yes, Cloud Computing is growing in momentum!
PRO: Cloud Computing enables companies to shed overhead costs associated with data centers, hardware, software and the staff that runs it.
The idea to buy the computing power of how much and only when you need it, is hard to look away from a solution like this! Today’s economy forces companies to be agile and operate on any level (that allows its overall infrastructure to scale up and down in size) without impacting the business.
Lowering any overhead costs (without hurting the business) is always appealing to executives, in good and especially challenging economic times!
CON: More IT jobs (have already and will continue to be shed) turn to outsourcing and/or depending on the size of their infrastructure and Cloud Services chosen, those jobs will be eliminated and add to more unemployment in the IT area.
One more thing that might be a risk for companies in selecting smaller to midsized Cloud Computing service providers, is the chance of the economy forcing them out of business. Depending on the size and nature of your data (and if the service provider is forced to downsize and/or go out of business) these things may have certain risks involved. That said, a company might want to weigh the risk to reward, when choosing a Cloud Computing solution and have a well documented plan to build, back up and failover everything necessary. Best to take a sandbox approach, then start with smaller and non critical applications at first.
There will always be needs for IT staff to run things in just about any size organization. However, some of the things that are keeping Cloud Computing from growing even faster than it might be able to (are concerns with uncertainty in security and standardization) are not widely adopted yet. Give it time and more security and standardization will come to fill those gaps and concerns though.
Great article here and I’m sure there will be many more articles will be written on Cloud Computing.
David C. Krull
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Cashflow is definitely a factor. The recession has only helped accelerate what is already a growing trend. A lot of non critical apps are already moving to the cloud. In my experience, small organizations are already moving the bulk of their IT needs to the cloud including business critical apps in some cases.