It happens all the time – just when you are in middle of important research web sites start loading at a painstakingly slow pace. This drives many users to the point of wanting to throw their computers right out the window.
Aside from being extremely frustrating, a business can lose revenue every second the site is down. Servers can only handle a certain amount of simultaneous users. This is what IT professionals call “success disasters.” That is because just when the company is at its height of success with an avalanche of people using the service, it can’t handle the overload.
This has created the need for a software architecture and expandable hardware resources that are capable of continuously serving customers, instantly.
This is where cloud computing comes in. It allows companies to concentrate on core competencies and let the IT guys worry about technical details.
Animoto had a “success disaster” a few years ago when it ran a huge promotion on Facebook. Animoto is a tool that automatically transforms digital photos into sleek video slide shows. At the peak of the promotion there were 20,000 new users signing up every hour, forcing the company to expand from 50 servers to 3,500 in just three days.
The RightScale technology used by Animoto automatically detected the increased load and launched more servers to handle the load. This was unprecedented in the world of computing, however a start up company would never be able to afford this technology. It cost Animoto between $10,000 and $15,000 to utilize 3,500 servers over the course of only a few days, after which they scaled back to the original 50 or so.
Cloud computing gives companies and individuals access to unlimited servers and their functionality over the Internet. The celestial-sounding term is quite appropriate since the user can’t see or specify where the the equipment hosting the resources is physically located. But somewhere out in the world, maybe a different country from where the user resides, there is a secure building housing the servers used to power the resources of the cloud.
This is divided into three services – the software, the infrastructure and the platform.
- SaaS (the software) refers to software applications such as GoToMeeting, Gmail and Salesforce that users can access through a web browser.
- IaaS (the infrastructure) is the attachment, control and management side of computing, networking and storing resources on the server level.
- PaaS (the platform) is when everything around the server, storage and networking layer is automatically taken care of.
Any time a company has data security concerns or finds the need for an efficient transfer of resources during high peak traffic times, they can create a private cloud.
Cloud computing will transform data centers into a highly tuned environment where fast performance, transfer speed of data and security are the most important elements.
Companies want to get the services they need at prices they can afford. They want services that are reliable and that keep on delivering in order to keep the organization functioning smoothly, without any down time. In addition, all of this must be done invisibly, behind the scenes to allow the organization to move ahead seamlessly. What all this boils down to is a high level of service, low costs and a host of services – and that is what cloud computing is doing to IT. In essence, it is turning IT upside down.
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Guest article by: This article was written by Morris Fisher on behalf of FileStorageOnline.net – best cloud storage providers.
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Guest article by: This article was written by Morris Fisher on behalf of FileStorageOnline.net.
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