consultant
21st June 2010, 11:34
Driven by another recent thread, I thought it would be worth clarifying what exactly cloud computing is.
First, what it isn't is every online application or service (SAAS or Software As A Service), website etc.
What it is, is a flexible online "computing".
If you have a new website that could create a lot of traffic and put it on a standard server, you are restricted by the specifications of that server i.e. RAM, processing power, storage. Therefore, is you get a high demand or usage, the site could fall over if any of those are used at peak, meaning that you may have to physically upgrade the hardware or move servers.
Cloud compluting allows you to adjust each of these paramaters at the 'flick of a switch' or even automatically, as and when demand requires. It is, in simple terms, removing the physical hardware from that of a server to group of servers which are 'in the cloud' i.e. out there, in the internet, somewhere.
For further reading, the Wikipedia explination here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing).
What all businesses need to be careful of is companies selling them cloud computing or cloud hosting, where as, in fact, one way or another, everyting on the web is 'in the cloud', and all that is needed is standard hosting.
In reality few companies really need to be using Cloud Computing, however, if you are developing and launching the next big thing, you may need this capacity (sorry, 99% of webstores, forums, communities, etc, will probably never need to jump from normal servers to the cloud).
Do you techies think I have got this right? (light touch paper and stand back......)
First, what it isn't is every online application or service (SAAS or Software As A Service), website etc.
What it is, is a flexible online "computing".
If you have a new website that could create a lot of traffic and put it on a standard server, you are restricted by the specifications of that server i.e. RAM, processing power, storage. Therefore, is you get a high demand or usage, the site could fall over if any of those are used at peak, meaning that you may have to physically upgrade the hardware or move servers.
Cloud compluting allows you to adjust each of these paramaters at the 'flick of a switch' or even automatically, as and when demand requires. It is, in simple terms, removing the physical hardware from that of a server to group of servers which are 'in the cloud' i.e. out there, in the internet, somewhere.
For further reading, the Wikipedia explination here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing).
What all businesses need to be careful of is companies selling them cloud computing or cloud hosting, where as, in fact, one way or another, everyting on the web is 'in the cloud', and all that is needed is standard hosting.
In reality few companies really need to be using Cloud Computing, however, if you are developing and launching the next big thing, you may need this capacity (sorry, 99% of webstores, forums, communities, etc, will probably never need to jump from normal servers to the cloud).
Do you techies think I have got this right? (light touch paper and stand back......)