New technologies are the choice of what is today and what is expected tomorrow!. The recent buzz word in Information Technology industry is “Cloud”.  I tried learn little bit about cloud computing and to know what is the buzz behind?. The two famous cloud providers, I came to know is Amazon Cloud & Microsoft Azure. I attended both of their introduction seminars that happened in Chennai. Also tested their cloud services.  But, it keeps asking me…what is cloud computing and why cloud computing. Exactly which existing services/products it is expected to replace?

This will be a challenging question for every  IT company? Whether to go for Cloud computing ?  To whom cloud services is a real need?. 

 Being a consultant and architect. I would like to type in here, what is my personal assessment on this. 

1) Is your company into Web Application Development?

If your company is into web application development and your clients are mostly corporate web solutions, then Cloud is not immediate replacement for existing Dedicated/shared hosting servers. Cloud computing will be a costly affair.

2) Is your company into Enterprise application development?

Check, if it is an Enterprise application development and your client does not own their servers or even an IT team. Then you can think of cloud, still check the monthly budget of cloud services/various services you/client would avail. Also assess, the importance of such services, security, your internet connectivity. Some cases, intranet servers can be speed than the same remote located cloud servers.

3) Do you own a portal with huge traffic and lot of file sharing management?

The present dedicated hosting is costing you huge, then you should consider cloud. But make sure the cloud server locations. Bandwidth & monthly running costs are not a concern to you. You should consider Cloud computing. Go for trial runs. 

4) Is your IT department is forecasting a huge investment of upgrading/replacing existing servers? 

Yes, cloud is a choice, but not all services need to be on cloud. You can limit to  Internet servers, redundant servers, application & client resources sharing servers. 

Overall, I would say in simple words, do not think of replacing web servers/dedicated hosting servers with cloud, just because it is a new solution and it is a new technology. Think of cloud, only when IT infrastructure investment/expansion cost can be cut down. That too only after comparing it with cloud charges based on the last 3 years usage( peak and idle).

Otherwise, dedicated internet & databases server can be optimal solution for medium size companies, including IT companies.