Cloud Computing - Getting Your Business Back To Business (And Out Of The IT Business)

By R. Byron Attridge, Jr., ClubDrive Systems Inc.

The recent implosion of the Real Estate and Financial markets has been quite a harsh wake-up call for everyone. No one understands the resulting pinch better than CFO's & CIO's that are forced to "do more with less" in order for their companies to survive. Interestingly enough, the wake-up call has coincided with the emergence of "Cloud Computing" as viable and cost-effective IT solution. After all, why did non-IT businesses get into the IT business in the first place? Why would you have rooms full of complex, difficult to maintain, energy hogging IT equipment in a Law Firm, a Medical Practice, a Hospital, a Bank, or an Investment Firm?

The answer is simple: They had no choice. In order for businesses to have access to the data and applications needed to operate, they had to adopt the defacto model for business computing: Distributed Computing. Over 30 years ago, distributed computing emerged out the need to push increasingly-large volumes of data and ever-growing applications through a data infrastructure whose capacity was rapidly being outstripped.