Business technology consultants would have no job if every
business leader was always completely aware of all the ways the technology in
their industry is changing. The problem is, as the curve of technology’s
advancement grows ever steeper on the timeline from the industrial revolution
to the spread of the internet to mobile technology to cloud computing and big
data, the task of keeping up and staying ahead becomes an ever taller order.
Adapting to change has long been a key to the success of any
business though technology is much more of a factor in business than it was
hundreds of years ago or even thirty years ago. Cloud Computing
offers effectively limitless depth and scalability, so essentially, the
flexibility to adapt to change of varying extremes in needed computing power is
available to all (given a reliable and sufficient internet connection). The speed
at which a business is able to accomplish adaptation to change is also
essential and there the cloud offers quick implementation of its services even
as its contents are in a state of flux.
Growing to Become an
Enterprise
One of the reasons that the most successful businesses such
as Amazon and eBay are so successful is that their infrastructure was designed
to be scalable. Before cloud computing was on everyone’s lips, having too much
investment in computing resources might have been a problem, but the advance of
internet technology bridged a gap and breathed life into cloud computing,
illustrating how technology feeds and builds on itself. In 1999, Salesforce was
able to offer enterprise applications through the web and Amazon capitalized on
their excess resources by offering scalable access tohardware and even
personnelthrough the web in 2002.
Smaller businesses and startups have to embrace the cloud in
order to grow and compete. Especially during the first few years of a business’
existence, keeping costs down is a fervent focus. The low entry-cost and room
to grow in cloud services makes them the only really sensible option.
Timing is Everything
One of the main reasons that any business project fails is
that it runs into problems with resources not being in the right place at the
right time. The accessibility and scalability of the cloud helps put the right
amount of computing resources exactly where and when they are needed.With
applications becoming increasingly integral to the functionality of the enterprise,
this is ever more vital as it bodes well for the agility of software
development.
Consumer Flux
Big data is also expected to be a key factor of successful
enterprising in this decade. Business leaders hope to be able to have a much
clearer understanding of their market through analysis of large data sets
relating to consumers. Though the room for growth when utilizing cloud services
is often cited as the benefit of its scalability, often overlooked is the fact
that the ability to scale back can be just as important.
Consumerism fluctuates due to a vast variety of factors. Big
data will aid in clearly identifying factors and better predicting
fluctuations. The ability to cut costs by scaling back rental of cloud services
during the natural valleys of consumption will be every bit as useful as being
able to scale up during peaks. Cloud vendors charging based on measurable usage
of their service is a step into much greater economical use of computing
resources.
The importance of scalability of the computing
infrastructure of businesses has been noted well before cloud computing became
so prevalent. With the current state of technology, it has simply never been
more important. The advantage of cloud’s scalability is such that avoidance
bears the heavy risk of getting left behind by tomorrow’s
enterprising competition.
My Friend Nichols, Who write this article post, is a Systems
Analyst and writer. As computing environments evolve and complexify, he does
his best to keep up with the challenge. When Arthur isn't drawing up
diagrams and flow charts, he writes for BMC, leading provider of cloud
design solutions.
