Comparing Cloud Computing to In-House Computing
Here is a table to compare how buying your own machines and software and running your own applications on them compares to deploying and/or running applications on the cloud platforms provided by players such as Amazon (Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3), 3Tera (AppLogic Platform), Force.com (Apex), Google (Google App Engine).
|
Task |
In-House |
Over Cloud Platform |
|
Build application |
Build in-house |
Customize existing application from the cloud computing vendor, or build in-house |
|
Provision hardware |
Procure and install |
Instant requisition via the Internet |
|
Provision software environment |
Procure and install |
Instant requisition via the Internet |
|
Deploy application |
Deploy application over in-house hardware |
Deploy the application and software environment in the cloud infrastructure via the Internet. |
|
Manage application execution |
In-house monitoring & management |
Use Web-Service APIs to control execution |
|
Cost |
Upfront cost of hardware & software, and on-going maintenance |
Pay-for-use or subscription |
|
Hardware/software maintenance |
In-house |
Not charged separately |
|
Usage monitoring |
Limited |
Cloud computing provider monitors usage |
The above table illustrates key value propositions of cloud computing:
- Quick provisioning of computational resources,
- No installation or maintenance work necessary,
- Remote management of application resources via Web-Service interfaces, and most of all
- Paying for only what you use.
Enterprise users will find it hard to resist the quick provisioning aspect and not having to deal with the installation and maintenance headaches, as well as only paying for what you use. Yet, I believe what truly differentiates cloud computing apart from everything that preceded it, including multitenant application hosting, and on-deman computing, is the remote management of the applications through web-service interfaces.