Hui Zheng
IT Department
George Mason University

Potential Benefits

Cloud computing is first defined by its utility based on pricing models. The user has a "pay-as-you-go" form of payment. Since users only pay for services they use, they could reduce the cost for new hardware with high performances and software updated. "In many cases, the cost and time elements are too high for many organizations, because the up-front costs and time to develop the information, software, and on premises resources is simply too great for many potential clients and ISVs. The cost of providing computing infrastructure and software by traditional ISVs is such that it is affordable only by larger institutions." (Katzan) Cloud computing reduces the maintenance cost of software and hardware because it's needed to improve the sufficiency of the cloud that users use, not the organization. Many small organization or individual can use the same service with reduced price. The government has also moved their service into the cloud to reduce budgets.

Cloud computing also increases the storage capacity for users, the difference between cloud computing and traditional form of computing is cloud offers shared information or as traditional has many copies. Often times people has to worry about if their hard drive could hold all those information, now they don't have to. Cloud computing provide them with the amount of storage they need at a certain time point and not all of the information. In cloud computing we have extreme spaces to store data because the storage consists of many bases in the cloud. Mainly we only use small amount of the information at a time, so space is not required as much. "With hardware, the end user does not need to plan for peak periods and growth, since elasticity is designed into the architecture of cloud platforms." (Katzan) There will be no more questions about space because cloud computing provides us with more than enough.

Cloud computing doesn"t only benefits on the cost and storage size, the availability of information is another major benefit with cloud computing. Reese once said, "Software as a service is a term that refers to software in the cloud. Avant is a web-based software deployment model that makes the software available entirely through a web browsers, As an users of Avant software, there is no need to worry about where the software is located, what kind of system its running on.." For cloud computing all it need is internet access. Cloud delivers the service via internet with only a web borrower such as us going on Firefox to www.facebook.com. The technology increases the mobility and availability information for users. Every time when a user changes a computer, the user doesn't need to install anything to access the services or information because cloud has it available on the internet. Simply open a web browser like Firefox then users will have access. Users should be able to go back into the software anytime anywhere.