No one is unaffected by globalisation and most companies in one way or another operate in a global market. Businesses must be enabled to fully leverage globalisation to seek out new markets, rapidly deploy to new low cost sources of supply and bring together the best talent across the world to solve today’s difficult problems. With economic uncertainty, and the hyper competitive world with the added dimension that the pace of technological change is rapidly changing at the same time, the increasing regularity of technology discontinuities makes critical strategic ICT decisions difficult to undertake. Cost reduction by the introduction of new technologies such as Cloud Computing and Software as a Service, are key trends that organisations are adopting in the response to the downturn to reduce the enterprise cost base and give business agility with infrastructure which reacts dynamically to business needs
Cloud computing is the current hot topic that describes the major IT mega trend in which information infrastructure is moving. It is the creation and deployment of services and applications over the internet, supported by a central computing infrastructure. In cloud computing a customer rents processing time rather than buying computer infrastructure to run applications. Cloud therefore has the potential to replace the need for major investment in IT infrastructure to run high-end applications for businesses. Cloud computing is rather about packaging IT capabilities that can be delivered via networks − this is the very essence of the convergence that has been taking place in the industry. The definition of cloud computing is best explained from a utility model. Nicholas Carr’s book ‘The Big Switch’ sums it up nicely, comparing where we are with cloud computing to the electricity supply industry in the 19th century.
The volume of cloud computing market opportunity could amount to $200bn.
One has to look at the technology pioneer MondCloud
The technology from MondCloud, enables the ability for companies who want to access services without investing in new infrastructure, the appeal of cloud computing is clear. Customers have the ability to plan and pay for the average load and then flex up to cope during peak loads and flex back down again afterwards. The flexibility of The MondCloud, removes wastage by removing unused storage capacity from customers’ operations. It improves the cost base, increases corporate productivity, and with an increasing interest in sustainable development, green issues and long-term energy use reduction and energy efficiency are all benefits of cloud computing. Imagine running a finance business where your transactions are managed and run in the cloud, or a trading business, such as commodities house, the day to day operations are run the cloud while the business can focus on customers, business strategy and developing new markets.
It is my view that customer’s needs, can be more simply defined. Getting the computing infrastructure job done as cheaply as possible with no CAPEX without negatively impacting business policies or creating an unbearable risk profile. Furthermore as the industry moves forward with innovation from companies like MondCloud working toward an architecture that offers networked IT services solutions of the future for major, global enterprises the benefits of cloud computing are compelling – reduced cost and improved productivity.
In summary cloud computing is primarily about convergence, the convergence between networks and IT. The network is the key, that offers technology in more cost effective manner. The network of the future will have to provide high availability, flexibility, scalability, and efficiency. With cloud computing, the industry has come full circle, the efficiencies of a centralised computing infrastructure that can be easily accessed via the internet are just too compelling to ignore.