CLOUD
A lot has been written about Cloud Computing. There are supporters of both ON Premise as well as Cloud Model and will present arguments in favor of either proposition for the Enterprise. Supporters of On-premise will bring up the subject of security and also being in control of one’s application, data and access points. Whereas Cloud supporters will state the ease of access, modular deployment and economies of scale to further the cause of shared infrastructure.
They are both right in their assertions; there is no right solution however the Cloud seems to be winning the current phase of discussions not the least driven by the economies and realization for the customers that IT is but just another enabler of business just like the telephone. Let is examine the telecom industry – do we care about what technology is being used at the back end or about the device we use to connect to another person. We pick up the phone and dial a number and are connected irrespective of what phone make, model or technology other party uses. Our concern is to connect, communicate and cost of transaction. However there are use cases for secured networks including the internal PBX exchanges and in some cases dedicated lines for communication across locations.
While IT industry would like us to believe CLOUD is new way of computing it is not new and has existed for years. Most of us have been using mail service providers like Hotmail, yahoo or Gmail for ages now. Even Social Media is not new and batchmates.com existed much before the arrival of Facebook or twitter. Folks like Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy talked about “Enabling the Information Age through Network Computing” or “Network is the Computer” almost two decades back. In a nutshell IT industry is delivering old wine in new bottle.
What changed in the past few years? Firstly access to network is easy, broadband access is just a phone call away compared to years of wait for a fixed line phone from BSNL especially in India. Even with the private telecom providers accessing anything over a dial up was often a frustrating experience. And then mobile revolution brought the network into the palm of our hands. No longer does one need to stick to a wall for access to Internet.
Secondly a glut of access point devices – while earlier one needed a desktop and in later years a laptop computer to enable IT now almost every phone is Internet enabled, I tried buying a basic phone with out camera or “internet” and got the looks reserved for a loony. Tablets also added to the merry world of data and Internet consumption. All these devices are gobbling up content at the speed of thought and are also creating and distributing content with same alacrity. Status update on Facebook, traffic information on twitter, photographs on Instagram or jokes on Whatsapp are all adding to create this big information and communication cloud.
Naturally your employer also saw the benefit of engaging you through the device in your hand as they saw this as an opportunity to extend work outside of office hours. That meant providing information or data you may need in the palm of your hands. Given the corporate IT set ups this was easier said then done and hence rush to cloud started. Cost savings from shared infrastructure is an icing on the cake while extended work hours supposedly leading to smarter and faster decision is prime mover. Mundane tasks like expense reports, CRM update or self education through cloud have now been consigned to “unproductive hours” that you spend at home.
This brings us to the next big thing – will the cloud render physical offices infructuous. Email has done away with snail mail and hence a postal address, mobile phone has done away with landline – let alone others I don’t remember my own office landline number, cloud brings about access to all business applications to your finger tips, webex and other such virtual presence applications will ensure meetings on the screen. Where is the need to invest in an office – roll over real estate giants CLOUD cometh.
