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1.2.1 From Mainframes to Clouds


We are currently experiencing a switch in the IT world, from in-house generated computing power into utility-supplied computing resources delivered over the Internet as Web services.

Computing delivered as a utility can be defined as the “on-demand delivery of infrastructure, applications, and business processes in a security-rich, shared, scalable, and based computer environment over the Internet for a fee”

This model brings benefits to both consumers and providers of IT services. Consumers can attain a reduction in IT-related costs by choosing to obtain cheaper services from external providers instead of heavily investing in IT infrastructure and personnel hiring. The “on-demand” component of this model allows consumers to adapt their IT usage to rapidly increasing or unpredictable computing needs.

Providers of IT services achieve better operational costs; hardware and software infrastructures are built to provide multiple solutions and serve many users, thus increasing efficiency and ultimately leading to faster return on investment (ROI) as well as lower total cost of ownership (TCO)

In the 1970s, companies who offered common data processing tasks, such as payroll automation, operated time-shared mainframes as utilities, which could serve dozens of applications and often operated close
to 100% of their capacity. In fact, mainframes had to operate at very high utilization rates simply because they were very expensive and costs should be justified by efficient usage

The mainframe era collapsed with the advent of fast and inexpensive microprocessors and IT data centers moved to collections of commodity servers. Apart from its clear advantages, this new model inevitably led to isolation of workload into dedicated servers, mainly due to incompatibilities between software stacks and operating systems In addition, the unavailability of efficient computer networks meant that IT infrastructure should be hosted in proximity to where it would be consumed. Altogether, these facts have prevented the utility computing reality of taking place on modern computer systems.

In addition, in the early stages of electricity generation, electric current could not travel long distances without significant voltage losses. However, new paradigms emerged culminating on transmission systems
able to make electricity available hundreds of kilometers far off from where it is generated. Likewise, the advent of increasingly fast fiber-optics networks has relit the fire, and new technologies for enabling sharing of computing power over great distances have appeared.

These facts reveal the potential of delivering computing services with the speed and reliability that businesses enjoy with their local machines. The benefits of economies of scale and high utilization allow providers to offer  computing services for a fraction of what it costs for a typical company that
generates its own computing power
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