Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing, + Website

Summary

Demand variation can be caused by a number of factors: seasonal or macroeconomic variation, chaotic and stochastic individual choice, natural events, feedback loops and bullwhip effects, windows of opportunity, business growth or decline, scheduled events, unscheduled events, or just about anything. Variations may be gentle or have a sharp rise and a gentle fall, as with news stories, or a slow rise and a sharp fall, as with tax filing.

Although some demand can be shaped, in today’s world of instant gratification, there would appear to be less and less opportunity to defer workloads, so variable and unpredictable demand creates a real dilemma.

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