Other characteristics of IaaS include resource sharing, on-demand service, rapid deployment, location independence, lower total cost for customer (pay for use), full scalability, no need for administration and maintenance of hardware, and enterprise-grade infrastructure for all customers.
The examples of IaaS are Fexiscale and AWS: EC2.
Way forward
Whether cloud computing is a hype or hope, that’s yet to be ascertained. The challenge is to provide services quickly and cost-effectively. also in the race are technologies like cluster and grid computing. The three technologies, however, are not fairly distinguishable (Fig. 3), and which one will emerge as the winner is not clear.
Cloud computing is not immune to risks and ethical objections, but the fact is that it promises big changes. Leonard Kleinrock, one of the chief scientists at Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) that paved the way for today’s Internet, said in 1969, “as of now, computer networks are still in their infancy, but as they grow up and become sophisticated, we will probably see the spread of ‘computer utilities’ which, like present electric and telephone utilities, will service individual homes and offices across the country.” This vision of the computing utility is taking shape with cloud computing.
If the recent market research is any indication, cloud computing may become a billion dollar market by 2012. So we can say that the Internet industry is on the Cloud!
The author is a regular contributor to EFY
