How does Cloud Computing benefit me?
How does Cloud Computing benefit me?
While supporting the information technology infrastructure of a business presents some challenges, it is also a major cost. As we saw earlier in this chapter, there is no one best way to provide IT services. In a recent poll, businesses said that on average 27 percent of their IT budget goes to supporting legacy systems. Cloud computing enables businesses to avoid these costs.
A modern alternative
Rather than going directly to an Internet service provider (ISP), companies usually rent server space from Web hosting providers that offer applications and hardware from servers to racks of servers. These hosting providers then sell capacity in their server farms to other companies, which use the space for organizing and storing their data or creating new applications. Some companies even contract with a single hosting provider for all their computing services; others use multiple providers because different types of hosting are suited for different needs.
Hosting providers should be able to deliver over 99.9 percent availability—meaning that the hosted systems should be up more than 99 percent of the time—and 99.9 percent reliability—meaning that up-time should never be below 99 percent plus less than .1 percent downtime over a month of operation. Usually, they achieve this level of availability by using redundant
