What is Cloud Computing?

Information systems are essential to virtually every organization in the world; however, the traditional model of creating and running business applications has grown into a cumbersome process. There are too many moving parts to buy, install, configure, and maintain, including hardware and software. The entire infrastructure must be able to work together, and this type of seamless interaction requires the oil of constant maintenance to run smoothly.

This overhead burden creates barriers to productivity in creating and deploying applications. The complex computing environment means that every little change can trigger repercussions throughout the entire organization. The overall responsiveness of the IT function seems to be significantly reduced, hampering the ability of a company to address constantly changing business needs. The end result is that business managers don’t get the applications they need to run their business—ending up with a welter of unintegrated, homegrown applications on spreadsheets, personal databases, or other unsupported platforms.

Enter cloud computing. Cloud computing is easy to understand—all applications are developed and run within a Web browser. With an Internet connection, your developers and users have access to your entire collection of applications—eliminating the complexity and overhead of maintaining a computing environment.

Moving to cloud computing immediately delivers enormous benefits. You no longer have to spend money to acquire and support hardware and software infrastructure, eliminating acquisition costs for your users and developers.

Even more important is the impact of cloud computing on the responsiveness of your IT systems. You can instantly add users and developers to your cloud computing environment. You can deploy applications to the cloud very rapidly, leading to greatly reduced cycle time for responding to user requests and new business opportunities. When you remove the overhead and complexity of your internal systems, your organization can dramatically speed up your entire IT process.