The Rise of Cloud Computing

An overview of the transformation to Cloud/SaaS computing model.

en was the last time you used a fax machine? A film camera? A vinylrecord? Technologies evolve, they evolve constantly, and they evolve inspurts and spirals, often throwing out the old for the benefit of the new. Thephenomenon is also referred to as

disruptive innovation

(Clayton M. Christensen,1995).

Just like in the case of payphones being replaced by mobile phones, faxes byemail, mainframes by personal computers, new disruptive technologies are oftennot as fast and don’t offer asmany features at the start, butthey offer a key advantage overthe existing technology –anything from cost, to size,mobility, or convergence withother technology.

Personal Computer technologywas a disruptive technologyback at the time of mainframesand expensive workstations, butwith time it has gotten verycomplex, burdened by layer after layer of software designed to deal withcompatibilities, threats, legacy, or bridging the gaps between various softwareplatforms.Organizations today feel this burden by having to worry about installing andmaintaining applications, supporting myriads of potential end users problems,managing servers, managing risks, while trying to keep up with the pace of innovation in the market. IT departments often have multi-year backlogs on thingsthat matter most – providing business users with the tools they need to compete inthe market. The trend that promises to break the vicious cycle and provide a computingplatform where the benefits are clear and quick to realize, without the exorbitantexpense of maintenance and deployment is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model,Moderro Technologies – www.Moderro.com -(800) 658-9602 | The Rise of Cloud Computing2

where the applications are hosted (maintained) by the application vendorthemselves, allowing businesses to deploy software quickly without any artificialbarriers, and leaving IT to provide value-added services to the businesses inrecommending, evaluating, and configuring the business platforms.Moderro Technologies – www.Moderro.com -(800) 658-9602 | The Rise of Cloud Computing3