Chapter 1. Grasping the Fundamentals

In This Chapter

  • Doing your computing on the cloud

  • Seeing what the cloud's made of

  • Comparing the cloud to tradition

  • Driving your business

In a dynamic economic environment, your company's survival may depend on your ability to focus on core business and adapt quickly. Yesterday's profitable business model can't be counted on to translate into future growth and profits. As your business adapts to changing government and industry regulations, evaluates new business partnerships, and anticipates competitive threats, IT needs to help the business find new ways to respond.

At the same time, plans for change must often be made in the context of limited resources for finances, people, technology, and power. In this chapter, we introduce you to cloud computing — what it is and how it helps companies rethink how they deploy technology.

Note

While there are a lot of technical considerations, keep in mind the fundamental truth: Cloud computing is a business and economic model. Is cloud computing a replacement for the traditional data center? The answer is complicated. In some cases, yes; in some cases, no.

Are we suggesting that the traditional data center goes away to be replaced with a cloud? Not necessarily. Sometimes the traditional data center is the best fit. However, for business agility and economic reasons, the cloud is becoming an increasingly important option for companies. We see cloud computing as the foundation for the industrialization of computing. ...

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