How Can Businesses Reap Full Benefits Of Cloud Computing?

Although there are many businesses that are able to reap maximum benefits of cloud computing, a lot of them fail in their efforts. The aim of this article is to address how businesses can maximize returns from cloud based computing by focusing on some key areas.

Back in the 1950s, a scientist named Herb Grosch along with other scientists predicted the situation we are in currently, with businesses accessing authorized mainframes. Grosch predicted that the world would retrieve data saved in fifteen major storage centers.

In his book called The Challenge of Computer Utility, wrote in 1966, Douglas Parkhill wrote about different approaches that can be used today and is applicable to our current operations. The book was awarded the McKinsey Foundation award.

Elastic Provision

Elastic provision refers to the effective management of limited resources to meet user demand. Limited resources refer to storage capacity, network infrastructure capacity and others. Elastic provision is an integral part of cloud computing because it dictates the type of resources every user will have access to at one point in time. Elastic provision faces two main challenges; one is limited resources and the other is effectively catering users’ demand. User demand varies in every cloud infrastructure as for instance, during some times of the day, there will be more demand or ‘peak periods’. The variance in demand becomes even more serious if the services offered by the cloud company are diverse.

To effectively address this challenge, users’ requirements should be challenged into clear bands or predetermined scenarios. It is all about the design and if the cloud architecture is designed in a way that it incorporates particular portals via which users can get access to particular established resources, the problem will be solved. The problem of limited resources can be effectively dealt by apportioning resources in an appropriate manner.

Minimizing Downtime

Every cloud system is based online and faces downtime, which is another crucial problem. Downtime can be minimized by few modern open source Infrastructure as a Service (laaS) implementations including Asgard and OpenStack.

Maintaining “Infinite” Supply

At any point in time, companies should not make users feel that they have access to limited computational service. Every cloud company has to be brisk. This can be achieved by effective elastic provision that make sure plenty of resources are available for those who need it at any point in time. Moreover, the load of computation should be placed to a reasonable extent on the user.

 Provide Cloud Service As A Utility

There are many companies that fail to recognize the difference between providing cloud based services for corporate gain and rendering cloud service users benefit. Users should be able to access your services as a utility and not as an end to itself. This has important linkages to how you use user data. Users’ gain will ultimately translate into corporate gain and this might not be a two way relationship.

Douglas Parkhill provided the four basic principles that can lead every stage of a cloud based project, from its basic design to overall architectural implementation as well as management and administration.