Cloud Computing: A Business Investment Priority

An emerging technology, Cloud computing is computing technology that involves data and applications being stored in cyberspace rather than on a physical computer. Tasks are assigned through a combination of connections, software, and service across a network. A recently released study has revealed that more corporations are realizing the benefits of cloud computing and are making it a high priority in 2011. The study from Unisys claims that corporations have placed the acquirement and use of cloud computing as one of the most important priorities for their IT infrastructure this year.
The Unisys poll was completed on January 24, 2011, The poll numbers indicate that of the 262 corporate respondents asked to name their company’s biggest priority for IT investment in 2011, 44% said that cloud computing was their top IT investment focus. The acquirement and use of cloud computing is not viewed as an operational expense, but as an IT business enterprise investment. The Unisys poll comes after a smaller poll was taken earlier that asked 88 respondents if they were intending to implement cloud computing in their organization. 80% of the respondents said they were planning to implement some form of cloud computing. Of the 80%, 45% said they were focusing on the private cloud, 15% on a public cloud, and 20% on a hybrid cloud.
The Unisys poll data has revealed that corporations are realizing that cloud computing offers their organization essential benefits and that adoption of the cloud is going increase significantly over the next year. Private clouds seem to be the most popular choice for corporate IT investment.
The cloud provides essential mechanisms to assist with business continuity such as redundancy, elasticity, and standard deployments. Both small and medium sized businesses can instantly attain the benefits of the massive cloud infrastructure without having to employ and administer it directly. The benefits of cloud computing include: reduced cost due to the cloud technology being paid incrementally, increased storage allowing organizations to store more data, highly automated, increased flexibility, increased mobility allowing users to access information wherever there is an internet connection allowing accessibility to multiple data centers anywhere on the globe, and IT teams no longer have to be concerned with computing issues such as server updates allowing them to concentrate on innovation. Cloud computing is one of the most advanced technologies in the world and is definitely the technological wave of the future.