Cloud Computing is the same as using IT as a utility
When speaking with clients about ‘the cloud’ I often compare public cloud services such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS and Google Cloud to utilities like electricity. Each day we take utilities for granted, when you turn on a light, you simply want the light to work.
You know you need electricity for that to happen, but at the time that you flick that light switch, the details of how the electricity gets to the light bulb are not important to you. It is unlikely that you think about electricity being created in a power plant, traversing through a vast network of high-voltage transmission lines to your town. Then heading through a substation, and eventually making its way into your home.
Put simply the process of turning on a light is hidden behind the basic act of flipping a switch. This is the point at which electricity becomes a utility. Utilities have many benefits, firstly you only pay for what you need. It would seem strange to buy a light bulb, and then to then pay your electricity provider for enough for your electricity upfront for the likely length of time that you would want to use the light bulb for. No instead, you pay for the amount of electricity that you actually use. Secondly you don’t even consider how or when power plants upgrade to the latest technology, you just assume that they are doing what they need to do, and when you need electricity it’s there! And finally, it is not your problem to have to manage scaling the electricity for demand. You know (or expect) that when more houses are built or more people move into the area, that there is enough electricity to go around, and more importantly, when you flick that light switch, it works.
So how crazy is it that generally we do not use IT and technology in the same way. Wouldn’t it be great to have the same benefits for the use of technology as you do for electricity. It would be so good to have these same benefits when developing and deploying applications. Storing data, hosting a website or streaming video. All require managing hardware and software, but of course in reality the management is an unnecessary obstacle when delivering your application to your users.
The solution is simple: cloud computing. But what is cloud computing? Read more here
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