Go Green, Go Lean and enable the dream – Switching to Cloud Computing
The main benefits of converting to cloud computing are: reduced costs; anytime, anywhere access, and increased administrative ease and efficiency. All these form the dream of all institutions.
Reduced Costs
Less money spent on: infrastructure needs (purchase of hardware and software), housing/storage on site, energy bills (as hardware etc need not be housed and run on the premises), staff to man servers et al. and on maintenance, downtime and repairs/upgrades.
Along with reducing costs cloud computing can provide a greener (more environmentally friendly approach) to purchase, organisation, structure, and operations.
Anytime, Anywhere Access
Both students and teachers will have access to information anywhere, anytime and from a myriad of devices that are not restricted by software or hardware. This will greatly enhance the teaching and learning process such as increasing opportunities for self paced learning, interaction with material in ‘out of session’ times, greater flexibility in access and interaction with content and increased ability to manage time and workload.
Less cumbersome means of transporting material and equipment are additional benefits.
Increase administrative ease and efficiency
There are definite benefits in terms of less administrative tasks to man servers et al. Less money is spent on hardware and maintenance and administrative costs for example on heavy duty servers and monitoring, troubleshooting and/or navigating emails and filters associated. This is evident from the experience within my college, which uses Google apps to run the email service. Although we have a server it would become even more burdened than it already is. The college now needs a new server as the current one is quite old (by IT standards and downtime and challenges being experienced). There have been delays for the past two years because of costs cited. In such a case cloud computing would perhaps be a smart option as it would offer cheaper means for storage, upgrades, administration, privacy and security. Our server experiences downtime, which further increases costs in fixing the server, while increasing inefficiencies and challenges to delivery and interaction with content and delivery methods already supported by cloud technology.
For other benefits see Commensus’ pitch on their virtual-server-hosting
Kerry-Ann
Posted in: Week 08: Files in the Cloud
Keisha Edwards-Hamilton 8:08 am on October 29, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I agree with you that cloud computing has green benefits. Through technology we can give back to the Earth that it has given to us. Going green also helps us to save money. Take for example videoconferencing. This decrease travel time and fuel costs to commute to school daily which creates a positive impact on the environment since travel expenses and carbon footprints are reduced and instead school operations are improved and are more productive for both students and faculty members.
schiong 2:59 pm on October 29, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
just curious …
1. If the company has 5 IT employees to maintain their server, create custom applications ,etc … what would happen to them if the company decided to go with Commensus or similar company? Is there a need to keep all of them employed ?
2. Is cloud computing really environment friendly? I have no answer to this.
A small company would probably turn off most their machines after office hours and during weekends.
Let us say that there are 20 workstations + 1 server + 1 backup server. That’s about 22 machines running during office hours. Let us assume that the 2 servers are the only machines running 24 x 7.
If I am providing cloud computing service for this company, how many computers would be running?
The company would get rid of their 2 servers (maybe or maybe not)… This means only 20 machines are running during office hours.
Since I am ensuring 24 x 7 uptime + data would be saved in different locations, this means I need to have at least 2 to 3 servers.
What about my system administrators for each location? I need to provide 1 power computer each.
What about my other technical staff? I believe I need to provide them computers as well.
What about my customer support? How many customer representative should I hire and how many of them should have a computer ?
The claim of cloud computing is to have “limitless” space. Hmmm … we all know that every hard disk would have a limit and each computer would also have a limit to the number of hard disks attached to it. I believe it is very possible that the number of computers used in cloud computing would also increase as more clients subscribe.
Again, I am just curious. In what condition or conditions would cloud computing be ideal?
khenry 11:34 am on December 4, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I agree that demands on hardware will increase for hosting services. However, the benefits of cloud computing suggest it would be ideal in institutions who: do not: navigate large numbers of networks and need not invest so much in purchasing and maintaining systems and infrastructure; do not deal with very sensitive data and; who do not have a lot of money to spend on
Kerry-Ann