What Is Cloud Computing?

One of the newest Tech industry buzz words is cloud computing. The term has been rising on Google Trends, and has had blogs, twitters, and everything in between chatting up this concept that could potentially revolutionize the IT industry.

Cloud computing allows companies to keep all of their applications, data, and software on an imaginary “cloud” of internet space. For example; instead of installing a suite of software for each computer for employees, you'd only have to load one application. That application would allow workers to log into a Web-based service which hosts all the programs the user would need for his or her job. Remote machines owned by another company would run everything from email to word processing to complex data analysis programs.

Cloud computing has sparked much debate over its security, price, and degree of use. In order to place such a large and valuable chunk of information up into the internet stratosphere, a company would have to entrust it to an outside provider, most likely an Information Technologies company. A recent article on CNET.com discussed some of the debates currently raging around the concept, and how it will both benefit and hurt the push for innovation.

One major point of debate is how a large corporation (100 plus employees) and small to medium size operations can both successfully afford, and utilize the cloud.

The article discusses how the latter is looking to minimize cost and complexity as much as possible by eliminating the need to own things. For small to medium sized businesses, purchasing unnecessary software and hardware increases upfront cost, as well as maintenance and upgrade dues, and can be detrimental to the bottom line of the company. This marketplace sees the issue as outsourcing as much information technology as possible and is willing to place a high level of trust in providers to achieve that.

Enterprises, however, tend to be much more concerned maintaining their existing investments in IT while gaining a return on investment for new spending on new technologies or processes. A tremendous amount has been spent on making IT a trusted resource. Companies won't move forward on cloud unless they can maintain that level of trustworthiness without excessive expenditure.

Despite its numerous benefits to companies of all sizes, cloud computing remains just that…cloudy. Only further advancements will prove, or disprove just how effective the concept of cloud computing will be for the IT world at large.