Will Open-Source Cloud Computing Become The Norm?

by on 03/08/12 at 9:26 am

The Adoption of Cloud Computing 

Cloud computing is revolutionizing the work environment of many companies. Organizations and companies are integrating cloud solutions in their offices and workstations for scalability, accountability and flexibility. Last year IBM, in a CIO study, revealed that most of the CIOs preferred cloud computing options for their companies. In addition, various server makers, such as Dell and IBM, are offering their own featured cloud computing solutions for enterprises of all levels.

Cloud solutions provide organizations with a new way to use computing services. These computing services are highly customizable and flexible. Organizations, according to their demand, can increase and decrease the amount of services they want. This helps them tremendously in cutting the cost of computing needs. If organizations want a special feature or a new service for their organization’s infrastructure, they can simply request that the cloud services provider add that special feature. The new feature or service added to the cloud immediately becomes available to all the users connected to the cloud. No need to install a software application on users’ PCs.

Cloud computing also proves to be quite economic when it comes to building the infrastructure of an organization. It saves immense amounts of money on hardware, networking and software. It is not that there is no need for hardware once you buy cloud computing services, but much of the hardware needs diminish after connecting to a cloud.

With cloud solutions there is a smaller need for staff, as there is less hardware. Fewer servers, network mesh, and offices are connected to the cloud for the majority of their computing needs. This is why there are fewer “helper” staff needed, as the “helper” staff were responsible for keeping the company’s hardware running.

Popularity of Personal Clouds

Gartner, an IT research and advisory firm, published a report stating that by the year 2014 personal clouds will replace personal computers. This major trend in individual consumers, which is promoting personal clouds, stores documents, pictures and music files on the cloud, allows users to access or stream them anytime and anywhere. The trend is promoting personal clouds in the industry.

Users prefer to store their music on the cloud and stream it on any digital device, which has a media player and is also connected to the Internet. Storing data online not only makes user’s data available anywhere, but also ensures the security of the data. No matter what happens to their local device, their data will remain secure and safe on the cloud.

Popularity of Open-Source Software

With the passage of time, companies and organizations have been concentrating on developing their infrastructure on open-source technologies. Open-source technologies have countless advantages over proprietary software technologies. Well-developed and famous open-source software with a considerable developing community can easily outshine proprietary software in a number of ways.

Open-source software technologies are transparent. We can determine what is actually occurring at the back end. This makes open-source technologies reliable and trustworthy, and companies can undoubtedly trust them for their private work.

Open-source software technologies are reliable and stable. Popular open-source software, such as Linux, is highly stable and secure. There are many developers around the world that participate in developing open-source software, making them secure and stable. Take a look at the Linux operating system, which is widely accepted as a reliable system. Linux is an exceedingly more secure and stable server than other Web servers.

Open-source software technologies are highly scalable. We can tweak them, and their power can be increased or decreased as per our requirements. All we need is a team of developers who know how the open-source software flows, and we can customize the software to our likings. There is no need to request a company to add a certain feature.

Will Open-Source Cloud Computing Become the Norm? 

Just as Linux is accepted as a featured operating system for Web servers because of its scalability, accountability and reliability, similarly a well-developed open-source cloud operating system can bring forth a revolution in open-source cloud computing. A project named Openstack already exists. Openstack was founded by NASA and Rackspace Cloud and is supported by many tech giants including Dell, Intel and AMD. The aim of the Openstack project is to build an open-source cloud operating system, which can be installed on a standard hardware. This will allow anyone from anywhere to install this operating system on a standard hardware and provide its own cloud computing solutions to the others.

Open-source cloud computing operating systems will be highly acceptable in the market, similar to Linux Web servers and any other open-source software. They too will be highly customizable and massively scalable. Normally there is huge support available for well-developed open-source software. If you are using proprietary software for providing cloud services, then you are highly dependent on the developer software company for its security updates, future developments, integration with other software, and customization. But if you are using open-source software, you just need to hire a team of developers who know how the software flows, and you can easily perform any function you want. This makes open-source software massively scalable, flexible and accountable.

With all these facts in mind, we can say that open-source cloud computing will become the norm in the future.

About The Author: Eva Green is an IT expert who blogs on behalf of Dell Servers.

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  3. What Is An “Open Cloud”, And How Will It Change The World?
  4. How Moore’s Law Is Pushing Companies To Adopt Cloud Computing and Virtualization
  5. How SMBs Benefit From Cloud Computing

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