Peaking Through the Clouds

GigaOM (Jun 25 2009) Cloud Computing

1. Cloud infrastructure services are particularly good at supporting variable demand and peaks with unpredictable timing or amplitude. Peaks are a challenge for CIOs, because forecasting too low may lead to poor performance or service unavailability, and guessing too high means paying for unneeded capacity. Peaking through clouds, instead of handling peaks with your own resources, can minimize cost while enhancing flexibility. Whenever the peak-to-average ratio is greater than the premium (if any) associated with utility services, a pure cloud infrastructure approach will provide cost savings. In fact, even for more consistent demand, a hybrid data center/cloud solution may reduce total cost. However, given that a recent report showed that cloud services might cost twice as much as an enterprise do-it-yourself approach, a good rule of thumb would be that if your peak-to-average ratio is at least 2-to-1, then cloud infrastructure services should definitely be considered. For relatively flat demand ... (Read Full Article)

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