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August 15, 2017

A Refresher on Cloud Computing

By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, TMC

Big Bang Theory actor Jim Parsons (News - Alert) recently explained that he launched his podcast because the news can be confusing. Sometimes, Parsons said, he’s not even sure he has a handle on the basics of what’s being discussed.



The host of “Jim Parsons is Too Stupid for Politics” offered NATO as an example. His point was that NATO is something we have been talking about for years, but that many people would be hard pressed to describe.

It’s easy to feel the same way when talking tech. I’m guessing that’s why Steve Ranger of ZDNet recently put together a story on the basics of cloud computing.

In the piece, Ranger reminded us that cloud computing allows for the delivery of computing services on demand. That could include applications, processing power, storage, or a range of other resources, he said.

Users are billed and pay for these resources via a pay-as-you-go model. And that helps them avoid upfront costs that they would incur if they implemented these resources in house.

The fact that organizations employ these cloud-based solutions also means they don’t have to maintain the IT infrastructure to support them. And that can lower their costs, their risk in putting money in the wrong investments, and can enable their IT team members to focus on more strategic pursuits. (That second sentence expresses my own words and commentary). And Ranger added that cloud solutions aren’t necessarily more affordable in the long term or more (or less) secure than customer premises-based solutions.

Nonetheless, Ranger said that the cloud today is the default model whereby suppliers deliver and organizations consume network resources. And he offered up the following statistics:

• 451 Research (News - Alert) forecasts that one third of enterprise IT spending this year will be on cloud and hosted services.

• Gartner says half of global enterprises now using cloud will be all cloud by 2021.

• IDC (News - Alert) has reported that more than a third of IT spending worldwide goes to building cloud computing infrastructure.

While the term cloud computing came into popularity in the early 2000s, added Ranger, renting computer resources goes as far back as the 1960s. Even back then, he noted, it was possible to rent time on a mainframe.

He also talked about the different methods organizations are using to implement the cloud, the three main cloud computing subgroups, and the leaders in the cloud marketplace. As you are probably aware, public, private, and hybrid are the three general types of cloud models – with hybrid (a mix of private and public cloud) in the lead.

Cloud computing subgroups include infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, and software as a service. IaaS includes networking, servers, and storage. PaaS takes all that and adds to it developer software and tools to build applications. And SaaS (News - Alert), the most popular cloud computing model, includes just business application software – stuff like customer relationship management software from companies like cloud pioneer and CRM marketplace leader Salesforce.

Speaking of marketplace leaders, the top companies in the cloud computing realm, according to the ZDNet piece, are Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Google (News - Alert).




 
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