On one hand we have the famous New York times case study that every presenter worth his salt talks about in an introduction to cloud computing. And then we do have blogs tell you that cloud computing will end up costing you more money.
Talk to a CFO and he will tell you that he is waiting for a positive ROI from IT right the days of client server computing !
Cloud computing or for that matter all of IT is more than just cutting costs. It is about empowering you to deliver new services and products to your customer in rapidly shrinking time frames. Veterans of the dot com boom/bust will remember the phrase Internet time and how things had to be rapidly done to keep pace with the market place. While we can debate on the real value of the dot com boom and look back with nostalgia on the excesses of that time the fact remains that the Internet has led to a drastic reduction in product and service life cycles. We can see the same leap happening with cloud computing. For businesses IT has gone from an enabling factor to a constraining factor.As this blog from Elli Lilly points out it is all about getting faster responsiveness from IT. The ability to cut the lead times from 90 days to near zero should tell you that it is more than just cost.
Cloud computing allows you to rent IT services v/s having to buy , build and maintain the service. Using a car analogy if you are a periodic user of a car it will be cheaper to rent. If you do use the car everyday then you will probably be better of buying it. Do remember these are not exclusive options. You may choose to rent a car for a weekend trip or a larger car if you have guests visiting you. Same thing with cloud computing. You get an additional option that you can choose from. It gives you a flexibility that wasn't available earlier and trying to quantify and compare the value with what didn't exist earlier is quite challenging.
Stay tuned for more thoughts on cloud computing and costs.
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