Cloud Computing: The future is Cloudy!

Gyaan:
Cloud is a metaphor for a network of computing resources accessible publically or vately over the Internet or an intranet. It is an abstraction of the complex infrastructure which is concealed from the end-user. The term “cloud computing”, more specifically, represents a style of computing where dynamically scalable resources are provided as a service through internet technologies
Why Use Cloud computing
Cloud Computing enables the smallest of organizations to harness computing power and best practices that were beyond their means a matter of years ago. It allows organizations to move from being technology-focused, to being business-focused, through outsourcing the management of the plumbing to experts. The following are the advantages of cloud computing
• Lower computer costs
• Improved performance.
• Reduced software costs.
• Instant software updates.
• Unlimited storage capacity.
• Increased data reliability.
• Universal document access.
• Latest version availability.
• Easier group collaboration.
• Device independence.
Cloud computing helps organizations by removing their capital expenditure and moving it to operational expenses
Services Offered through Cloud Computing:
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) also known as HardwareInfrastructure-as-a-Service (HIaaS), is a service model around servers (compute power), storage capacity, and network bandwidth. The offered resources most often leverage the agility and flexibility of virtualization, but can also be physical. Examples include Amazon (EC2 and S3), Rackspace, AT&T, and Verizon.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provides an externally managed platform for building and deploying applications and services. This model typically provides development tools (such as databases and development studios) for working with the supplied frameworks, as well as the infrastructure to host the built application. Examples include Force.com, Microsoft Azure, and Google App Engine.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) involves applications or services which hide the supporting infrastructure from the consumer, but are able to scale to meet changing demands. Examples include Salesforce.com and NetSuite
According to Gartner By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets Several interrelated trends are driving the movement toward decreased IT hardware assets, such as virtualization, cloud-enabled services, and employees running personal desktops and notebook systems on corporate networks
By 2012, India-centric IT services companies will represent 20 percent of the leading cloud aggregators in the market (through cloud service offerings). Gartner is seeing India-centric IT services companies leveraging established market positions and levels of trust to explore nonlinear revenue growth models (which are not directly correlated to labor-based growth) and working on interesting research and development (R&D) efforts, especially in the area of cloud computing
However, there are a few impediments for a company banking on Cloud Computing.Some of them are:
Key impediments to enterprise adoption of cloud computing are:
• Migration of Current enterprise apps conveniently
• Risk: Legal, regulatory, and business
• Difficulty of managing cloud applications
• Lack of demonstrable cost advantage for cloud computing