"Cloud computing is changing the way recruitment companies are delivering IT resources to their staff.
A lot of the benefits have been well documented by all and sundry, but there are some key initiatives that are being lost in translation. Cloud is delivering more choice and, at last, real IT cost transparency, and these benefits are changing the way business leaders engage with technology.
To understand what these benefits represent we need to acknowledge where enterprise IT has come from. Traditionally most businesses invested heavily in hardware, software and expertise to build, operate and maintain their technology services. The businesses had to purchase for peak usage and there had to be regular investment to keep the environment fit for purpose. This led to a bloated, inefficient IT and performance, and reliability differed between organisations. This model also meant the business was locked into the technology they invested in.
Generally all business applications such as messaging, CV parsing and job posting tools were hosted on a single, logical data centre environment. Applications depended and competed for the same infrastructure resources (server, storage and network). If there was an upgrade or a change to an application that required more performance or capacity from your infrastructure, then further investment was required. This made it difficult to identify and calculate the real value of investing in new technology to drive efficiencies and business growth.
Low latency network, increased resilience, and server virtualisation led to a series of innovations that have been termed as Cloud. These innovations allowed businesses to procure and utilise IT services that are delivered from the vendor’s data centre. Essentially businesses are now able to buy the solution, not the underlying technology. Paying for these solutions as a utility in a number of different charging models has brought about a flexibility that hadn’t been previously available. The industry is now treating IT applications and infrastructure as a common utility, albeit a complicated one.
So how does choice and IT cost transparency fit into the new world of IT?"
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