Often we discuss technology trends and the changes they cause. We debated the technological complexities involved and estimated its rate of market adoption. But most of the technical articles forget one key factor: the driving force behind the adoption of any technological change is the economic factor.

When looking at the future of IT, we can learn something from the past and how organizations and society invested in these technologies. In the past, a few mainframe companies had access to computers (the computers were too expensive) and the expectation was that IT would enable them to automate their business processes, to make them faster and cheaper. Later we saw the emergence of the distributed model, client-server, which cheapened the cost of acquisition of technology, allowing you to create solutions aimed to generate more speed and functionality demanded by specific Departments. However, the rapid proliferation of different systems has created a demand for integration that culminated in the emergence of the ERPs.

The situation today is very different from years ago. The Internet is already a part of our daily life and is ingrained in the IT business. The companies did not begin to settle more in just reduced costs. This is “business as usual”, the duty of every self-respecting manager. IT has already done much in this sense, “how to create shared-services center and consolidate its data centers?“. IT now has the opportunity to be looked at from the perspective of revenue generation and as a platform for creating new business and support growth strategies and not just an operational area.

To view IT as revenue generator is a different “mind-set“, because IT was always seen as supportive for the business, but now, it generate new revenue. Now IT can be seen even as its source of income. The adoption of IT cloud computing allows you to generate revenue and profits. We can start talking at the end. Cloudnomics.

Cloudnomics can be translated as a new economic model for IT, where metrics like TCO lose enough of its importance and IT begins to be seen through the eyes of a business case. In fact, any business is started to go forward, generate revenue and profitability!

As cloud computing enters this process?

With public cloud. IT will no longer install, configure and upgrade physical servers, and the standardized and automated processes that characterize a cloud environment, the number of technicians dedicated to support greatly decreases. IT can focus on innovation and value creation for the company. The cost models also change with cloud and its concept of elasticity. You pay for the use of resources consumed, which can be directly linked to revenue generation, increased use of IT, more revenue generation. It is an economic model that changes the rules of the game. It costs the same to rent a server for 1000 hours to 1000 servers for one hour.

A practical example of how the current IT model limits the generation of significant revenue: To explore new business opportunities that have a short life. In the current model, it is not economically justifiable to purchase a technology platform and put it into production (with high up-front investment) for it to operate for only a few months, taking advantage of a unique business opportunity. The bill probably will not close. With this cloud, it is perfectly possible. A simplistic example, but it shows the idea: producing an animation, where the defendant is a huge computing power to render final film, much more than the sum of all previous months of production and that after the closure dispensing with all computers. Cloud computers are allocated as they are needed and that there is no turning off computers . The provider, in turn, also enjoys economies of scale, keeping thousands of servers to be shared by hundreds or thousands of customers.

The conceptual shift is much larger than technological change. Comes the entrepreneur CIO, attached directly to the CEO. A profile is much less technical and more focused on business and entrepreneurship. In fact, a suggestion of an MBA could be “Entrepreneurship in IT” .

Among the structural changes to IT, we see the start of an organization aimed at supporting other sectors of the company to a revenue-generating industry and the transformation of an organization focused on building activities and support systems and computing power for an organization aimed at creating a computing platform where new businesses will be generated. The choice of applications and consequent utilization can be moved to their users.

This new IT may act as an incubator for business start-ups within the company.

Finally, IT is a business unit which is simple to write, but hard to put into practice. Sure, it’s not going to happen from one day to another, but a process that will happen over the next year. But can get started today.

Cloud Hosting, also called clustering is a hosting service that operates a network of servers that are connected permanently. As a shared hosting is limited to the resources like disk space, bandwidth, memory, processing speed of a single machine, the cloud servers provide access to a virtually infinite infrastructure and do not necessarily need to be in the same data center, in reality it is likely that the servers are spread around the world.

The Cloud Hosting provides an environment that does not limit the request to a specific set of resources.

The Cloud Hosting allows servers hosting sites to have an agility and optimized performance. The servers use redundant networks and large Internet service providers with local and international broadband connection.

How it works

Features of Cloud Hosting is limited to hardware and application handlers. For example, resources may be limited to the amount of: RAM server, processing, energy storage and bandwidth. It can also be limited to the amount of available space, budget and a host of other reasons that hinder the expansion.

Cloud computing allows the customer to buy more computing power according to the need. Energy resources and load balancing are intended to provide seamless connectivity to the end user .

Benefits

With the opportunity to have more resources available, the end user is able to expand business without incurring extra inventory or overhead. For the first time, he’s getting something that is economically efficient, more reliable and better all around.

Companies of Cloud Hosting only charge the amount of computing power that is used by the user. Think of it as a bill similar to the supply of electricity or water – you pay for what you use. The Cloud Hosting provides the ability to meet sudden spikes in traffic without having to pay for extra bandwidth when traffic is slow. All billing is based on use.

The Cloud Hosting offers benefits of reduced costs through consolidation, more security , better performance and flexibility. There is also the benefit of redundancy. Users are now able to reduce its inventory of hardware, which leads to less energy requirements and, of course, benefits the environment.

The Cloud Hosting is a very attractive proposition for anyone involved in commerce of any kind and especially those with budget constraints. Small businesses and entrepreneurs, among others, are able to focus on growing the company without having to learn new skills or spend precious budget resources with additional personnel.

The Cloud Hosting is great for IT professionals who can pre-establish their bandwidth based on different levels of Internet traffic.

The days are gone when it was necessary to maintain contact with the host to request extra bandwidth or lose the habit, because the band was not available.

Ease of Use

What was once done by a large number of IT professionals, can now be accomplished by one person in a matter of minutes. Suppose, for example, we need a server to host our applications. It will now be able to launch a server with its own root password where the user can load its own code.

In many cases, there is no provision of a domain, blog WordPress and other applications.

In conclusion, the Cloud Hosting is stronger, more profitable and more reliable than the issue of self-hosting.

In early 2011, Google reported a change in its leading position in the list of major internet companies. There are many opinions about the causes of the fall ranked by Google in this list, but everyone agrees that there is a tendency to accelerate changes in the sphere of information technologies. Each company is eventually undergoing some administrative changes and has its own economic cycle. But much more important now, as these internal cycles coincide with the rapid development of data centers industry in general, and cloud hosting technologies in particular.

During the first five years of the last decade Google has been queen of the ball. Its name became the basis of the verb (“Google” – to search the web). It has changed the nature of the search, use and attitudes to information. They did not invent the search engine, it was simply meant to improve it, and the world has changed beyond recognition. It is predicted that it will replace the Internet itself! And then came the “Social Internet” and more people began to use the services of Facebook and Twitter, and Google search engine and RSS feeds overshadowed. Information business has changed, as well as many other industries. Nobody noticed this, but in fact the second five-year plan last decade was very different from its first five years. And although Google still means something in the field of Internet search, social networks, no doubt, came to the first position. We cannot say definitely whether it is strategic or administrative problems for the search company, because in reality, it does not matter. What really matters is what people are saying that Google is not so popular.

What implications does all this might have for other companies that are not related to Google or not are the pillars of the Internet? If you produce cars, drugs, or widgets? Maybe you sell bricks or mortar. What if your company is not related to the field of information technology business? Regardless of the scope of your business, we can assume that this shift from 10 to 5 years, probably will affect your business too.

Today, almost every company and every industry is built on information. The sign may be written in “Fashion House“, but in fact almost any business is related information.

Information on financial and capital markets risk management, information affecting the adoption of certain decisions, information that is necessary for cooperation, information to track users and interact with them through various means of communication. And most of this information is at your data center or moved to a “cloud hosting” structure with a common access from anywhere in the world. You cannot assume your business to be information-oriented, as in the case of Google, but in reality it just  is. And companies that are most actively engaged in the information business, according to data center as a key strategic asset. It is used as a weapon in the competition.

This means changing attitudes towards the IT infrastructure, data centers and the potential use of cloud hosting technology.

In other words, what seems easy now, may no longer be so after 5 years.