by Hovhannes Avoyan
| Oct 06, 2009
I read about a company, Franz Inc., which makes advanced Semantic Webtools, that provides a perfect example of the dramatic cost benefits of cloud computing. Seems Franz Inc. wanted to perform a critical test to its software across multiple machines and databases, but the company didn’t have machines or the software, and it would have cost them more than $100,000 to buy them. But the company wanted to do the test to show customers the competitive advantage of its software. It HAD to be done.
Instead, Franz Inc. turned to a cloud solution. It staged its service on Amazon’s S3, running its complex tests in a few days. The result was that Franz Inc. gained tremendous insights and performance data to evaluate. And it only cost them less than $200.
Good for you, Franz.
Sure, there is still plenty of doubt and uncertainty among companies about cloud computing, especially among IT folks who are used to touching and seeing their resources, for example, plugging into a LAN. Losing control over that can be scary and a bit intimidating.
But my biggest argument against this is that we’ve already eclipsed this obsession with physicality via current levels of abstraction and virtualization in the modern enterprise. Consider, too, how we distribute our enterprise data farms and put offsite backup sites far away from our primary data centers to assure the data survives. We’re way past the touchy-feely stage for technology already.
But it seems that, increasingly, companies like Franz Inc., are putting aside their fears and learning about the cloud’s advantages by dipping their toes in the water, or, perhaps I should say cloud vapor. They’re coming out of the experience with some important lessons – including financially rewarding ones.
This trend, perhaps more than anything, will help advance the pace of the cloud revolution. As somebody said somewhere…a great journey begins with the first step.
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