CoC or Cost of the Cloud
If you look around you see every business advertises for goods and services has website along with an email address. You see websites from your local dentist to Wal Mart, and even the dollar store down the street. These websites are not just a group of pictures and text for you to view. Many of them include sound, interactive content, and a shopping cart.
To support then interactive content, a shopping cart, forum, and games the complexity multiplies exponentially. The cost of maintaining such a website becomes more complex as the complexity of the content raises.
Many people who promote Cloud computing say that Cloud computing is a money saver, or great ROI (return on investment). This is true in most cases. However, there are cases when building your own network is more cost effective.
Dave Rosenberg wrote an piece on Cnet.com titled, The Cost of Cloud Adoption. It has become generally accepted that it is not if Cloud computing is going to take off. It is on a forward movement.
In doing reach for this post, I ran across an interesting article titled The 10 Laws of Cloudonomics. He writes about making Cloud services a public utility services. Joe Weinman is Strategic Solutions Sales VP.
What I see as for considerations to go to Cloud Computing are;
- Volume will reduce cost
- It is hard to forecast demand. Very few people have a crystal ball that is even 90% accurate
- Latency is the time it takes from a request is made to the time a response is given. This is a big issue when it comes to ensure satisfaction.
- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Having one server in one location could mean you are out of business while that server is down.
- There needs to be a balance between overhead and flexiblility
Cost of ownership vs using a service from the clouds needs to weigh the much higher than our costs for purchasing and supporting a more traditional client-server application. The primary differences are, of course, the on-going monthly fees to cloud vendors vs. the up-front cost of hardware, software, and the people to maintain it.
