Cloud Computing: Why Companies Are Depending More On Outside Networks

As companies grow, diversify, and expand their information technology (IT) capabilities, the need for cloud computing does too, since these companies require multiple types of clouds all at once to meet their broad demands.

Virtustream, a cloud-hosting solutions provider, has conducted research on the use of cloud computing and finds that the “majority of U.S. businesses are now using some form of cloud computing for IT.” According to the report’s author, Paul Burns, president of Neovise, “Public clouds from the likes of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft simply are not enough to satisfy all the computing needs of enterprise IT organizations. This has led to a relatively new form of IT sprawl: cloud sprawl.”

But it’s not just the private sector who has embraced this flexible, fast, efficient, and economical solution to information- and process-heavy applications; the federal government has too.

According to an executive summary issued in February 2011, the federal government’s current IT environment is characterized by low asset utilization, a fragmented demand for resources, duplicative systems, environments which are difficult to manage, and long procurement lead times.

The summary argues that inefficiencies like that negatively impact the federal government’s ability to serve the American public citing cloud computing as a viable solution.

“Cloud computing has the potential to play a major part in addressing these inefficiencies and improving government service delivery. The cloud computing model can significantly help agencies grappling with the need to provide highly reliable, innovative services quickly, despite resource constraints.”

Furthermore, according to the summary, the private sector has taken advantage of this technology to improve resource utilization, increase service responsiveness and accrue meaningful benefits in efficiency, agility, and innovation. The summary posits that by following the private sector’s lead the federal government will, too, be able to “deliver public value by increasing operational efficiency and responding faster to constituent needs.”

While security is always a concern when sensitive information is at play, many experts advise companies who deal in healthcare and financial information to consider a hybrid cloud approach in which secure data lives on in-house servers while cloud computing does the “heavy lifting” in terms of raw processing.

Many companies, such as Netflix, however, are eliminating in-house computing power in favor of the cloud.

Actsoft’s newest version of Comet Tracker, set to release in summer 2013, has a more sophisticated version of a cloud which provides more flexibility for a wide variety of customers — from high-security users who choose to store information on in-house computers to our lighter customers who use the cloud exclusively.

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