Cloud Computing and its silver lining !!

By S.Suren

In my previous article I had spoken about various software architectures such as SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), SOCA (Service Oriented Component based Architecture) , SaaS (Software as a service) and WOA (Web Oriented Architecture) and how these are beginning to play an impact on the way software’s and hardwares are going to be distributed in the future.

However, just like anything else, things change and that’s what keeps the world moving forward. So here we go a new term, Cloud Computing, this is new thing around the corner. Many ERP Vendors are talking about, experts are brainstorming if this is the right way forward and then there are those daring companies that have already taken the step forward and doing very well at it.

The concept of cloud computing incorporates many different architectures in it such a Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS) and Software as a service (SaaS) and others that work on some kind of common business application online.

In laments term, cloud computing can be referred to where resources are rented from a third-party provider and billed accordingly to a consumption measure, i.e. more of a variable cost (OPex) than a Fixed Costs (CAPex). This has been the primary reason for its growing acceptance by customers worldwide.

Sun Microsystems, IBM, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are some of the major cloud computing service providers. It is being adopted by individual users through large enterprises including General Electric and Procter & Gamble : Source: Wikipedia.

Columbia law student and tech blogger Luis Villa, identified that Cloud Computing can be observed in 4 kinds of clouds, namely:

· hosted elsewhere (Salesforce.com);
· services involving data that can't (yet) be managed locally (Google Maps);
· services that make creation of new data technically or economically feasible (Wikipedia); and
· Services offering computing and storage, rather than data (Amazon Web Services, or AWS).

So there we go, this new system architecture looks very much feasible in many different aspects and looks like it’s here to stay, but then like I said previously , there is always one better just around the corner, but then how far away are we from the corner is the question !!

Stays informed and stay ahead of these terms, as a consultant in the ERP Field these things come in very handy during discussion with clients and colleagues alike.

Hope you found this post informative and interesting.

Feel free to drop me any queries, suggestions or feedback to ssurenlk@msn.com

Have a nice day!!