Ecommerce Blog

Most think cloud computing is about the ability to save operational costs. That may or may not be the case, depending upon your enterprise or ecommerce problem domain. Indeed, there are many dimensions to consider here, including:

• Ongoing operational cost reduction.
• The value of preserving capital.
• The value of upsizing on-demand.
• The value of downsizing on-demand.
• The value of shifting the risk.
• The value of agility.

Let’s explore each:

Operational Cost Reduction

We all know that cloud computing is cheap…okay, cheaper…okay, it can be cheap. Thus it’s a good idea to figure out the actual cost reductions that cloud computing can bring to your enterprise IT. The trick here is not only to figure out how much money can be saved, but how much it will cost to save that money.

Preserving Capital

It’s money in the bank which allows the business to run. The more money we have in the bank, the more we can purchase things for the core business such as inventory that can be sold, or new plant equipment that will save the company money during production. In any event, it’s good to keep as much capital as possible on hand to invest in the business, and not into infrastructure such as data centers, hardware, and software.

Upsizing On-Demand

Core to the ability to preserve capital is the ability to upsize your IT infrastructure on demand, or simply pay more operational dollars for additional computing capacity which would traditionally require a capital expenditure. Many cloud computing providers call this being elastic, or the ability to grow or contract to accommodate the business. For example, you can call upon the cloud computing provider to support an additional user and processing load through the holiday, when considering ecommerce solutions.

Downsizing On-Demand

Like upsizing on-demand, you need to consider what it will take to reduce computing capacity and dollars paid. What does it take to scale down in case you no longer need the computing resource and want to reduce costs as well? Such is the case within many ecommerce systems with capacity requirements that are seasonal.

Shifting the Risk

Another core value of cloud computing is the ability to shift the risk from your enterprise to the cloud computing provider. This concept refers to the fact that, since it’s up to the cloud provider to handle the computing processing load and you’ll pay by use, then it’s possible to reduce the risk that you’ll run out of capacity to support your customers and core business processes. The risk functionally shifts to the cloud provider who is better suited to accept that risk.

Agility

Agility means the ability to change the IT infrastructure faster to adapt to the changing needs of the business, such as market downturns, or the introduction of a key product to capture a changing market. This, of course, provides a strategic advantage and allows the business to have a better chance of long-term survival. These days many enterprises are plagued by IT infrastructures that are so poorly planned and fragile that they hurt the business by not providing the required degree of agility.

This post was contributed by guest columnist David Linthicum. David is a cloud computing and SOA expert and author of several books on Information Technology.

Original post by David Linthicum

Came across this humorous video via Storefront Backtalk. Check out Hitler’s reaction to cloud computing security problems:

Can’t see video? View it on Youtube.

Original post by Linda Bustos

Those moving to cloud computing are doing so around the promise of more effective and efficient computing. Indeed, cloud computing is not a revolution in computing, but a simple platform change that holds the potential to reduce our need for a huge amount of software and hardware to support our ecommerce systems. However, the intersection is a bit more difficult to find.

First, since this is really the first blog to explore the value of cloud computing within the world of ecommerce, let’s put forth a general definition of cloud computing. For the most part I like to go with the National Institute of Science and Technology, or NIST, who defines cloud computing as having the following characteristics:

• On-demand self-service.
• Broad network access.
• Resource pooling.
• Rapid elasticity.
• Measured service.

Cloud computing’s value is the ability to expand access and provision resources as you need them, and then have those resources expand as the application (in this case, ecommerce) needs to expand to support an increasing or “bursty” processing load. In the world of ecommerce where the margins are typically razor thin, the use of cloud computing provides on-demand access to application servers, databases, even middleware as needed. If deployed correctly, the use of infrastructure hosted in cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, should function as if it’s in your own data center.

While the value proposition of cloud computing is generally clear, the use case for eCommerce can be…well…cloudy. The value as I see it would be in the “rapid elasticity” that cloud computing brings, allowing those who need the extra capacity to get the extra capacity without driving waves and waves of software and hardware purchases, or worse, having to acquire more data center space. When using cloud computing, the extra capacity is on-line and ready for use minutes after you need it, which is perhaps the most compelling reason to leverage a cloud computing model.

Those who move portions of their ecommerce systems to cloud computing have to evaluate their own requirements. I see the need for cloud computing arising when the answer is “Yes” to at least two of the following questions:

1. Do you have excess capacity standing by (e.g., idle servers and databases) for the time when your ecommerce systems need the additional processing power, such as the holidays?

2. Are security requirements around the information you retain and/or process low to medium?

3. Will your business benefit by the preservation of capital?

4. Will cost reductions have a direct benefit when considering the profitability of the company?

It’s interesting to note that the questions above are more about the business benefit of cloud computing than the technological advantages, and that’s the way those who maintain and deploy ecommerce systems should look at them. Clearly the goal is to be more effective and efficient with the same architecture, technology, and deployment models you support today. Perhaps therein lies the intersection of cloud computing and ecommerce.

This post was contributed by guest columnist David Linthicum. David is a cloud computing and SOA expert and author of several books on Information Technology.

Original post by Linda Bustos

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Original post by Stacey Higginbotham

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Original post by Robert Scoble