Cloud computing to be as transformational as e-business

Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner Fellow, defines ‘cloud computing’ as massively scalable IT-related capabilities provided as a service using Internet technologies. “During the past 15 years, IT industrialisation has grown in popularity as IT services delivered via hardware, software and people have become repeatable and usable,” he says. “This is due, in part, to the commoditisation and standardisation of technologies, in part to virtualisation and the rise of service-orientated software architectures, and, most importantly, to the dramatic growth in popularity of the Internet,” he adds. Plummer says that, taken together, these three major trends constitute the basis of a discontinuity that will shape the relationship between those who use IT services and those who sell them. “Essentially it will mean that users of IT-related services will be able to focus on what the service provides them, rather than how the services are implemented or hosted,” he says, adding that although different names for this type of operation have come into vogue at different times – utility computing, software as a service (SaaS) and application service providers – none has hitherto gained widespread acceptance. David Mitchell Smith, vice president and Gartner Fellow, also makes the point that the types of IT services that can be provided through a cloud are wide-reaching – starting with the idea that users can harness CPU cycles without buying computers. “The focus has moved up from the infrastructure implementations and onto the services that allow for access to the capabilities provided. “Although many companies will argue [about] how the cloud services are implemented, the ultimate measure of success will be how the services are consumed and whether that leads to new business opportunities,” says Mitchell Smith.