Benefits of Cloud Computing - User Perspective

Despite possible data security risks, cloud computing has some benefits that many organizations are certain to take advantage of. Let’s discuss about the advantages for each one (User, Service Provider, and Industry)

Benefits in User (Organization) Perspective:

Cost Effectiveness: With this model of deployment an organization can avail cost effective services.

Mobility: A user of an organization can access his information from anywhere.

Easy Upgrades: An organization can avail any new features or upgrades in faster time.

Flexibility: It allows much flexibility than traditional computing methods.

Easy Switch over: Having little expenditure involved in this model of computing, organization can easily switchover to other service provider for better service.

Allow IT team to shift focus: With this mode of computing, an organization doesn’t need to take care of any regular server maintenance issues. In turn they can concentrate on their innovation.

In coming post let us discuss the benefits in service provider perspective.

Usage Monitoring in Cloud Computing

To ensure adequate service levels and to avoid being overcharged for cloud services, there are tools to monitor and manage cloud usage. Public cloud applications and services like Sales Force, Amazon EC2/S3, Microsoft Windows Azure and others are now a critical part of computing infrastructure. For vital business services in public cloud environments, or spanning public clouds and data centers, a service provider should have a tool to provide a complete integrated view delivering the detailed quality of service metrics, alarms, usage of your monitoring environment and automation that allows to manage service levels and maintain up-time.

Growing demand for cloud infrastructure services (IaaS) in India

Latest trends shows the increasing infrastructure services boom in India, while all managed and co location data center providers started offering cloud infrastructure services and other companies seriously evaluating & acquiring all required hardware and software infrastructure to move into the cloud. The concept of "Pay as you go" & "pay as you use" is showing successful results in the market. In the other part of the world the companies like “Rack space” are generating good amount of money out of these services, Indian infrastructure providers are looking all possible ways to tap the Domestic and global markets.

Data centers named Ctrl S, ESDS and Net Magic started offering cloud services. In another case a largest Broadband services provider from India, Sify started offering cloud hosting in partnered with VMware virtualization platform.

Below mentioned is the software infrastructure for providing a complete suite of cloud hosting services with pre paid and post paid model billing and service delivery.

Virtualization Platform, Service Provisioning systems, Usage Monitoring tools, Usage Metering systems, Rating and Billing Platforms are the required software to offer complete cloud services suite.

Let us discuss about each platform in the coming posts.

India to lead world in cloud computing: Ballmer

Microsoft Corp sees India as the global hub for cloud computing, the concept of renting computing power that has taken the technology world by storm and in the words of the NYT, what Silicon Valley cannot seem to get its head out of.

“India will not only see a surge in cloud computing services but companies all over the world will look to India to support their transition to cloud computing,’’ Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said on Thursday.

The world’s biggest software maker is among a handful of companies betting big on cloud services, aiming to convince enterprises to give up building and managing data centres and switch to their computer capacity instead; the others being rivals such as Amazon, Google and AT&T as well as smaller firms like Rackspace and Terremark.

Microsoft believes India will move directly to the cloud, much like it bypassed the landline revolution that never happened and leapt to mobile phones, Mr Ballmer told a packed press meet. Mr Ballmer is in India to underline the importance of the company’s cloud services platform Azure, wherein people can use applications from email to payroll systems hosted online.

The transition that India will champion will seed 3 lakh jobs in five years, during which the business is estimated to grow to $70 billion, Microsoft said, quoting a study by Zinnov Management Consulting. Jobs will be generated in areas like cloud consulting, enabling software as a service, integrating offerings like Azure with IBM’s Blue Cloud or salesforce.com’s customer applications on cloud, and creating new applications.

For Indian businesses too, there is great potential, given that 30%, or $7 billion, of the global cloud computing work is to be offshored, said the Zinnov study.

Microsoft already has more than 600 customers for its cloud services, but wants a deeper head start over rivals after catcalls of playing catch-up in other tech fields have been growing louder by the day. Indeed, Mr Ballmer was speaking to reporters a day after Apple overtook his company as the world’s biggest technology firm in terms of market value, more than a decade after he took over its reins.

The company is, therefore, sparing no efforts in making its cloud computing push a success in India, a market that is “developing very nicely”, where “piracy is reducing and intellectual property protection is better than in China”. Mr Ballmer also noted that India is among the top five or six countries in terms of talent and market potential.

Microsoft said cloud is important in India as it is a catalyst for IT adoption. “We are successful at exporting IT services and talent. But when it comes to using technology domestically, we are quite poor,’’ said Microsoft India chairman Ravi Venkatesan.

There isn’t much use of computers and technology in schools, homes, government offices or by the more than 4 million small and medium businesses. More Info>>