Identifying applications for public and private clouds

Cloud computing is all about efficient use of resources, principally, managing capital and technology support costs. Finding where resource efficiency could be low is the key to finding cloud computing applications.

Good candidates for the cloud:

• Applications that are used by a group of mobile workers to manage their time and activity, and that contribute only limited information to the company's broad management information databases. Sales support and field service support applications are good examples of this.
• Applications that require system hardware or software not normally used by your company's IT operations. An example would be a Linux application in a Windows shop.
• Applications that are run infrequently but require significant computing resources when run. The cost of sustaining the excess internal IT capacity for these applications can be significant. This is particularly true if the applications must be run ad hoc, and thus could collide with normal IT schedules.
• Applications that are run in a time zone different from that where your company's IT personnel are located, depending on how much usage is offset with your support staff. Here, cloud-sourcing may be a better alternative than starting your own multi-shift support operations.
• Major changes in company IT use, created by M&A, business changes, etc. can benefit from public cloud computing during the period of IT transition. The cloud is a good framework for testing and prototyping application changes, even if the final applications will be run on your own infrastructure.
• If your company is planning on outsourcing web hosting and Internet-hosted customer or employee services, the back-end server portion of these applications are good candidates for public cloud computing implementation.
• Companies who have distributed server locations and data centers to support a set of applications used throughout the company. By creating a larger resource pool, you may be able to make more efficient use of servers and storage, lowering equipment costs, and also support your IT investment more efficiently. The more server complexes your company uses, the more it stands to gain from private cloud computing.
• Companies who want to have backup for critical applications are good candidates for both public and private cloud computing. By creating a cloud-friendly internal IT structure, you'll find it easier and more efficient to outsource applications to the cloud if internal systems fail or are overloaded.

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