Everybody is on the cloud or on their way, but how is your company evolving its cloud technology and IT strategy to improve business growth? We debunk and uncover some of the most common questions related to enterprises interested in evolving their business strategy with this innovative technology.
A history of the cloud
Cloud computing is when an enterprise accesses servers, storage, networking, and software through the Internet from a provider with pay-as-you-go pricing. You only pay for what you use. Cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) store your production workloads off-site, whereas an on-premises solution means that IT infrastructure is tied to actual hardware you maintain. The concepts of cloud computing originated in the mid-1960s when computer scientist J.C.R. Lindlicker extended mainframe computing to the world’s first interconnected system of computers. By the 2000s, cloud computing turned into an entire industry, with major key players forming in the same decade such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.Traditionally, telecommunications companies offered single point-to-point data connections to customers. As a result of cloud computing’s evolution, virtualized private network connections (VPNs) yielded the same service quality as their point solutions at a fraction of the cost, according to IBM. Rather than build on-premises hardware to allow users to have their own connections, telecom companies could provide those users with shared access to the same on-site infrastructure. This resulted in significant savings.
The current state of the cloud
Cloud computing became mainstream because of its affordable pay-as-you-go price model. For example, a load balancer used to cost well over $50,000; on the cloud, a load balancer can be set up in seconds with significantly lower pay-as-you-go pricing because of the economies of scale the cloud provides. Once enterprises saw dozens of cloud-based startups turn into billion-dollar companies, they started to take the cloud seriously. The big three cloud providers include Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Cloud computing is transforming the way businesses build and deliver not just products but customer solutions to their users. Cloud computing also offers increased elasticity to scale up resources as needed on-demand, agility, availability, redundancy, security, and reduced cost. One of the main driving factors of cloud adoption was scripted architecture. For the first time ever, companies could create a script of their software stack and automatically deploy that script to the cloud with platforms like AWS instantly deploying the required resources in the script. Entire software updates can now be done with the click a button at 1/100th of the cost. As the enterprise has shifted from being product-driven to service-driven, the cloud is moving from being tech-centric to user-centric. This has given birth to what is known as “hybrid” cloud computing. include the ability to store part of your production workload on-premises and the rest in the cloud. IBM defines a as “a combination of different clouds, whether those clouds are private, public, or a combination of the two.” A hybrid cloud solution can also refer to a mix of multiple cloud environments between different providers, or combining half cloud, half on-premises solutions in the same cloud model. Some companies have moved to a hybrid cloud model to extend existing physical hardware infrastructure investments, scale capacity needs, tailor hardware to workloads, and optimize current networks. Taking advantage of the increased security of an on-premises solution creates a hybrid cloud model that brings together the best of both worlds. The greatest obstacle for companies is determining which parts of their workloads are a good fit for the cloud and which parts need to stay on-premises if any. Standardized APIs and a strong are viable ways to overcome this challenge.
