"Gartner likes to describe cloud computing as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model. Cloud computing extends the existing capabilities of IT by offering infrastructure or platform-related services on a subscription model. It is a concept that provides computing resources residing on external devices connected to a mesh of grids, allowing the users to deploy their applications or outsource their functions through the Internet without being aware of the whereabouts of the physical infrastructure," says Staten. What's significant to note is that unlike utility or on-demand computing, the provider is in complete control of the infrastructure. This translates easily into a kind of service, which enterprises can leverage and use without significant internal expertise and hassle to control the supporting infrastructure.

Here's an example from Staten. "When an enterprise deploys a new app, it is the role of its IT shop to figure out where to fit it. The queue to get an app implemented is anywhere between four weeks to nine months. If someone in marketing wants to launch a new promotion, they can't wait that long. They would prefer to go to a cloud vendor, and without a lot of technical knowledge, they would get their app loaded and available, and would pay for it with their credit cards."

"Cloud computing gives an edge to enterprises as they can add capabilities and increase capacities on the fly without having to invest in infrastructure, training or licenses. One of the most important features of cloud computing is automated management and reallocation of resources. This means that a user can work on a platform without worrying about adaptability, scalability and elasticity," says Kaustubh Dhavse, deputy director of ICT practice at Frost & Sullivan, South Asia and Middle East.

In addition to online players such as Amazon, Google, Akamai, 3Tera, etcetera, software giants like Microsoft have begun to take note the new concept that might create a seismic shift in the way IT is deployed and consumed.

Window to the Cloud World

Microsoft is not only introducing HPC-related enhancements in its development platform but also service-enabling a host of its enterprise apps to run on a cloud-computing environment. "We strongly feel that people are going to choose the best of both worlds (software and services). Practically, SaaS is just a delivery mechanism. It is not a platform paradigm. Software plus service is actually a platform paradigm and will reflect how people are going to consume software going forward," says Tarun Gulati, GM, marketing and operations, Microsoft India.

Conventionally, HPC has always been the ruling ground of open source software. Now, Microsoft wants some of that action. "Microsoft has made significant inroads in HPC in the last few years. MS Windows has started to fit architecturally with this grid model," points out Staten.

This is giving an unparalleled boost to Microsoft's cloud initiatives. "With our online suite of offerings, we are currently talking about online versions of our Exchange, SharePoint and Unified Communications stacks of software. Going forward, most apps will slowly start to have services-component built in. This will give more choices to enterprises in their decisions to consume software. Whether they want to have full control or if they would like to consume software as a service. Or may be, they would like to choose a hybrid model, where certain elements will be deployed locally and the rest is hosted on a cloud environment. We have, for example, MS Exchange online, which has shared APIs and configurability built across to be deployed as a service to enterprises. Going forward, we will have our CRM enabled for online computing," says Gulati.