Paul Hinks' Blog

I’m looking at doing some work for a cloud computing provider in San Francisco right now. It’s making me think a little bit more about the space than I have done before. I know everybody thinks the cloud is the “Next Big Thing” (I feel like there should be a copyright symbol after that phrase), and I do feel it makes a lot of sense to make computing power available in an on-demand, utility provider sort of model. The problem is is it really cost-effective versus the traditional hosted server model? And is it compatible with an in-house system that many larger companies run? Because is if it can’t work well with either of those two models then it really has no customer base.
I run the IT operations for a small company, and I know I want the most cost-effective model to host my servers. Right now that advantage is clearly with a traditional hosting company. I can see no way my application will suddenly require the extra processing power a cloud provider will theoretically be able to offer it, and in my case I see no easy way for the application to be able to take advantage of it if it was available. And the extra cost involved in this form of hosting negates any potential advantage it might offer anyway.
Since in my case, my core requirement is a traditional hosting service, I would expect that core purchase to be competitive with its traditional suppliers. If I do then require any surplus CPU power or storage space then I’ll pay cloud rates for that. If the new requirements become standard for me I’d expect to be able to add them to my core plan at a lower rate, and then only pay for resources beyond my new expanded programme.
I have some jobs that need to run for a couple of hours a month, and I’d love to be able to have those live out on the cloud and just pay for the time they spend processing – it would cost pennies a month from any of the providers. The trouble is they require storage of their state between runs, and that can’t be archived away with the job itself, so I’d again end up paying for resources that I’m not using.