Head in the clouds – a beginner’s guide to cloud computing

Cloud computing (also sometimes known as Software as a Service or SaaS) has been widely heralded as a development that will fundamentally change the way businesses and individuals use technology. Historically, the software that enterprises depend on to do business (for example databases or word processors) has always taken the form of applications that users install on individual computers, paying a licence fee for their use. Cloud computing, however, turns this model on its head by making these applications available through the browsers we use to surf the Internet either for free, or for a monthly charge.

This shift, away from computing that depends on information hosted on individual PCs or company networks towards storing that data in the Internet itself has the potential to transform business. Internet giants, Google and Amazon, have already invested heavily in cloud-based services. The former has made its ‘Google Docs’ suite of office applications a central part of its offering to businesses, while Amazon has quietly turned itself into a leading provider of online storage and hosting space for business, counting the likes of Twitter among its customers. With Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and other technology heavyweights following the early leaders into this territory the rise of cloud computing looks unstoppable, but what does it actually mean for businesses?

There are several inherent advantages to moving from traditional to cloud-enabled services. Their ‘pay monthly’ model makes them very cost-effective for companies that want to avoid the expense of hefty licence fees, while delivery via a web browser makes them easy to deploy and use. In theory, any organisation able to access sufficient bandwidth can use cloud services with a basic PC set-up, thereby reducing the need for them to invest in ever more powerful hardware.

Another benefit is that people can access their business services and applications through almost any device with an Internet browser. Cloud computing applications are also being tailored to work on mobile devices. The launch of the 3G iPhone, for example, was accompanied by many vendors developing browser-enabled applications for the device.

These qualities also mean that cloud services are very scalable, able to grow or (as is especially important in the face of an economic downturn) contract according to a company’s needs. This factor has contributed significantly to the growth of cloud storage, which an increasing number of businesses are now choosing in preference to owning and managing their own data centres.

However attractive the above makes cloud computing to businesses, its benefits depend on one immovable factor: having a resilient connection to the Internet. Surprisingly this is one area where many businesses in the UK struggle, as they still depend on Britain’s ageing legacy communications infrastructure for their data services. Browser-enabled applications may be user-friendly and inexpensive but they are hungry for bandwidth in both the upstream and the downstream. Each change made to a cloud-hosted document or database entry, for example, must be uploaded to the Internet to be saved for future retrieval. This requires constant and uninterrupted access to the Internet.

All this will present no problem to companies that have already invested in Next Generation infrastructure, as fibre optic broadband provides sufficient bandwidth and service resiliency for them to deploy cloud computing effectively. Those companies that have not yet upgraded, however, would be strongly advised to do so before they initiated piloting cloud services. Not only could attempting to run a Customer Relationship Management package such as Salesforce.com using legacy infrastructure be unsatisfactory for users, but it could even hinder a business’s performance.

In today’s challenging economic climate, innovation in IT is increasingly being seen as a way to make businesses operate more nimbly and cost-effectively. Cloud computing is one such innovation that allows organisations to spread the cost of owning and maintaining software while allowing their network to take some of the strain for running it. 2009 could very well be the year in which businesses head into the cloud, but without access to sufficient bandwidth their progress could slow down to a crawl. This is why the move towards the next generation of computing needs to be underpinned by Next Generation Networks.
^{By Julien St. John-Dennis

Head of business products at ntl:Telewest Business}

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Head in the clouds – a beginner’s guide to cloud computing

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