A great deal of media coverage and column inches are currently being given over to what has become known as ‘Cloud Computing’.
Well known brands such as Amazon and Microsoft are starting to enter the arena to accompany the efforts made by Google and IBM. There are many descriptions to be found on the web; Wikipedia has an entry stating that “Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them.”
In simple terms, Cloud Computing could be thought of as running an application not loaded on your local machine, ie across the web, from which the term cloud derives. The easiest analogy, and indeed one of the earliest from would be Webmail applications such as Google Mail. Today we take webmail for granted, but have you ever thought of running CRM applications (Customer Relationship Management) on a remote server?
Applications such as Salesforce.com has won ground in the battle between hosted and locally installed applications. The lower total cost of ownership (TCO) has been one of the key drivers for the growth of hosted solutions. Its subscription-based model virtually eliminates the capital expenditure barrier for medium-sized companies. Typically packaged CRM software will only start to pay for itself after three years, so companies choosing that route need to be prepared to make their investment up front.
Cloud computing used in this scenario benefits organisations by dramatically reducing the cost and management overhead of doing it themselves and provides a fixed and predictable cost for the service, usually based on the number of users. It can also significantly reduce any operational or investment risks when implementing a new technology.
According to Star, almost two thirds of IT departments’ time is spent on tactical, non strategic tasks - 39% of time is spent on maintenance, 21% on upgrades and tuning. These figures alone can make a compelling argument for outsourcing your IT support and provide substance to the idea of subscribing to hosted applications.
Of course you may perceive cloud computing as being the provision of remote servers typically running Windows or Linux, but without applications the exercise becomes invalid. These servers will still need to be maintained, managed, licensed, patched and upgraded. The beauty is that you end up paying a fixed fee per month for this as a service.
Cheap broadband connections for business overcome many of the service quality issues that affected the early ASPs.
However, this improvement should not detract from the fact that companies using hosted software are dependent on having a live internet connection to be able to access their key customer data. While hosted CRM service providers offer service levels, they are only able to do so up to the edge of their own environment. Therefore, one of the most significant growth areas over the last 12 months has been the move from unmanaged Internet access to managed IP networks, often referred to as private clouds. These clouds are usually managed private MPLS type networks and benefit the organisation through the extra security, quality, flexibility and reliability offered.
PSU and Cloud Computing
PSU have been supplying and supporting cloud computing scenarios in one form or another for more than 6 years now. Starting with the simple usage of desktop sessions from remote locations through to full Citrix rollouts for clients with hosted applications running on our own server farm. PSU use Citrix for delivery of many of its user applications. It certainly makes life easier for the IT department as new starters are issued with a standard laptop requiring nothing more than the installation of a Citrix client.
Indeed the concept of Beyond Content Management, the website content management system supplied on a monthly subscription model by PSU Software, is pure cloud computing. The software that allows you to update your own website is hosted on a remote server with users logging in through a regular web browser. It has to say something when the people pushing the addition of the millionth word in the English language within the media recently, finally announced that the word was 'web 2.0'.
PSU's inhouse software development team have also architected our own inhouse CRM and business management software; hosted on a server and accessed by staff via a standard browser from anywhere in the world.
Arguments for using remote servers
One compelling reason for considering using someone elses managed servers was ironically discovered by the directors at PSU over the past 6 months. Our self installed server farm and related cooling had gone in smoothly and continues to offer reliable access, but our power consumption has dramatically increased - with the relevant increase in costs. PSU, in partnership with three of it's larger clients, is about to take over two dedicated racks of serverspace and servers at a major data centre.
Even our bean counters ensure that we never just implement technology for technologies sake. It has to be reliable, but most importantly has to be financially viable.
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