The Promise of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing seems to be the buzzword in the IT world today. Loosely speaking, it refers to software delivered as a service through the internet. Traditionally, software has always been bought on a licensed basis and installed and run on servers in a company’s data center. Cloud computing turns that concept around with a subscription model. It's like how we get our electricity now: we simply subscribe to Meralco, and pay on a monthly basis. We don’t need to install and operate our own power generation system in our houses.

We are actually using cloud computing without our knowing it. Every time we send or receive email using Gmail or Yahoo, we are relying on the email infrastructure of Google or Yahoo, without needing own email servers, or figuring out the necessary email protocols. We just simply logon on our browsers, unaware of the thousands of servers powering the email system.

In fact, Google has extended their email service to organizations and businesses. They are offering the service for free to schools and universities. This means that Google schools with a *.edu domain can have their emails hosted with Google at no cost. This makes sense as schools and universities have hundreds and thousands of email users, and at the same time have limited budget for IT. For businesses, a paid subscription model is provided by Google with their Google Apps service.

The advantage of using a cloud (the cloud refers to the internet as commonly indicated in network diagrams) is that it eliminates the concerns about the infrastructure, hardware, licenses, backups, maintenance, and upgrades, not to mention the IT personnel needed to support the application and the obsolescence typical of hardware . Since the services are delivered over the web, only a web browser is needed, together of course with a reliable internet service.

Commonly vendors charge on a per user basis. Consequently, IT costs are easily predictable and can scale up as needed. There is no need to have an army of IT personnel or the expense of hardware or software licenses.

Some other vendors such as Salesforce.com and Netsuites are making Enterprise Resource Packages (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) services available as web services. Instead of using Quickbooks, for example, companies can sign up for an Accounting web service, that can be up and running in no time.

For small and medium sized business, especially in the Philippines, cloud computing services are very attractive. Combined with the use of open-source software, these can go a long way to bring down the cost of IT services for companies.