Enterprise getting bullish on Cloud

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Underutilization of IT resources and the complexity related with managing the growing need for better IT infrastructure is motivating the enterprise segment to go for cloud based soluti0ons to their day to day IT issues.

If we look back a bit, decomposition of applications into components  that is - beyond macro-level tiers such as Web/UI tier, application/business logic tier, and database tier) was enabled by service-oriented architecture (SOA). Decoupling of applications from specific, dedicated hardware has been enabled by virtualization and grid techniques. Automation of hardware allocation across applications has been enabled by increasingly sophisticated metrics, management, and control.

Under this initiative, the decoupling of “server-side” software from hardware—and the flexibility, dynamics, and automation with which that software is run—has led naturally to a model referred to today as “cloud computing”.

Most simplistically interpreted, the cloud metaphor is meant to convey that a user of an asset “in the cloud” has no worries at all or need to worry where or how that asset is resourced, recovered or remodeled for better utilization or in other words for optimum utilization of resources.

The cloud demystifies the location of the asset and the only thing the user is concerned with is that the expected asset exists and it works. The essential two characteristics of a cloud environment are that -
The asset is set up, deployed, or engaged instantly or near-instantly over a network (usually the Internet/Web) without binding to specific physical compute resources, and
And the capacity of the application (supported number of concurrent users, transactions per unit time, amount of storage, etc.) is adjusted automatically as demand fluctuates so that manual sizing and provisioning are eliminated both up-front and over time.

The notion of cloud initially evolved in the context of applications accessed over the Internet and Web. Initially referred to as “hosted applications” provided by “application service providers” (ASPs), this phenomenon later became known as “software as a service” (SaaS).

And today, as the cloud metaphor and terminology evolved in the last few years, the notion of SaaS asked the question of what else could be offered “as a service”. The original SaaS (which refers mainly to complete applications), platform as a service, or “PaaS”, and infrastructure as a service, or “IaaS”. IaaS refers to very basic compute capability—machines with operating systems and storage.
Enterprise are also breaking it further down into application based approach and ask for healthcare as a service or banking as a service etc etc. moving forward cloud is surely going to be the way forward as more and more enterprises are moving towards the same and embracing the next generation IT infrastructure.