Cloud Computing - A Technology or a Buying model

In my last post I have written about the "Cloud Computing" and who should use it.  But let us see if this is a technology or a buying model. Cloud computing is all about computing outside of your firewall and sharing the resources. I will not classify this as a Technology. Here SaaS as technolgy plays an important role.

Long time ago when electricity was invented there was no concept of public distribution of electricity. Every home was having it's own electricity producing machines. Then came the concept of "Electricity Grid". And electricity was distributed to each home at a cost effective manner.

Cloud computing is similar to the concept of "Electricity Grid" and "electricity distribution". Here the computing power is available in the form of many computers and servers working as grid and available in cloud. The data (electricity) is distributed and made available to your need via internet.

The concept seems simple and public appealing. However there are still issues remaining of pricing. Here pricing of this service is the key. As the software applications that you will be using depends on the need and quality of the application. At present most of the applications are available as free service. But it is becoming more challenging for companies to develop a sustainable revenue model.

While this concept can help many of the small businesses to use the technology in a simple manner without investing too much into technology infrastructure. However this also pose a significant risk of your data and documents being stored outside of your organization boundaries.

I will still consider this more like a Buying model than a technology. Coming years will tell us if this will be a sustainable business model in a technology world.