The Outlook On Cloud Computing

You may have heard the term cloud computing - more than a dozen times. Cloud computing is causing a big wave in the technology industry and getting a lot of exposure in the media, throughout the analyst community and more and more within Cory's client base.

What is cloud computing? The first thing you need to understand is that the "cloud" is just another word for the Internet. Quite simply, cloud computing is services and applications that are hosted on and accessed through the Internet.

Cloud computing is a pay-as-you-go approach, in which a low initial investment is required to get going, and additional investment is incurred as system use increases.
In this way, cash flows better match total system cost.

Cloud computing infrastructures are built, by and large, from open source components. In the old way of doing things, a large investment is made early in the project prior to system build out - and well before the business benefits are realized. Cloud providers are conservative in some respects, as they do not want to make large investments upfront without knowing the financial outcomes. Cloud providers host their services at World Class Security and Network Operation Centers which are staffed 24/7 and have multiple levels of redundancy on both the network side and the power grid. More and more companies are outsourcing some part of the network to the cloud and that number is expected to increase - significantly - over the next five years.

Now, here may come the uncomfortable fact about cloud computing.

The fundamental shift about cloud computing is that your data doesn't live in your servers anymore - the data lives in the cloud. To some who are accustomed to the traditional on premise data model, this concept can and most likely will seem terrifying.

So how do most organizations approach cloud computing? One little step at a time. Make that a double step. More and more, businesses are giving their data a double life - residing on in-house servers as well as in the "cloud" that, by all accounts, is getting bigger.

Keeping track of - and maintaining control of - your data when it's living a double life can be a big proposition. And that's where data integration fits into the picture. Most companies who are betting big on cloud computing are looking at ways to manage the flow of data back and forth between on-premise apps and cloud-based apps.

Cory Communications is watching the shift that cloud computing is bringing to the business community very closely. Please call us at 1-877-489-8186 or send an email to info@corycommunications.com with any views or concerns.