Do I really need to consider Cloud Computing?!

(Image From Wiki)

To answer the question why cloud computing, first we need to look into what is the existing traditional way of computing, deploying and maintain the applications and what are the available options:

Option 1: Companies can have their own servers with required software and connectivity. In this option, we need to spend more initial infrastructure cost and we have complete control.

Option 2: Hosted Servers on rental. You have less control over here, but the user no need to worry about the maintenance of the server including hardware and software.  But one key downside in this approach is you need to still pay even your application usage is idle.

With both these options, we have still the following open questions:

1. How to scale up or down your hardware very quickly with very low cost?
2. How to reduce your operation costs based on the usage?
3. How to provide high availability / business continuity?
4. How quickly I can make my application Go-Live?

Cloud computing is a new emerging third option which answer the above questions.  

Option 3:    Cloud computing which is a scalable virtualized hosting environment. Cloud computing users can avoid capital charges on hardware, software, and services. Just pay the provider only for what we use (consumption based model). Charging will be similar to resources consumed, like electricity or subscription time-based, like a newspaper.

What are the Benefits?

1. Agile: Ability to implement, deploy the solutions for end users very quickly.
2. Low Cost: Operation and capital cost will be less.
3. Scalability / Flexibility: Ability to scale up/down your application hardware / software in minutes.
4. Pricing Model: You pay for what you use. Based on the Usage of resources.
5. Reliability:  Multiple redundant sites and the quality maintained in Datacenters by Microsoft / Amazon etc makes more reliable. Most of the time, it will be 99.99% availability.
6. Maintenance: Less maintenance (Hardware / Software) as it will be takes care by service providers.
7. Better Operational models:  For instance, we can utilize in places where we require scale-up hardware only for particular time frame alone where the user load is heavy.
8. Easier Deployment: Simplified Application Deployment and management.

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure