Is Cloud Technology really cheaper??

Cloud has been not only the fastest growing technology but its revenue model is also a unique thing to look at. The recent $67 billon merger between Dell and EMC was a marriage forced by the rise of cloud, as EMC is good at storage and Dell as maker for computers.

Though we know that cloud computing is cheaper, especially for the booming startups, but in this blog we will try and take the other side, which is a bit tricky. There are a few points to think about.
Firstly, lets see that the upload cost is nil for most of the service providers. This means, that they want you to store as much information as possible and then it will be difficult to switch to other service provider at a later stage.
Next, once you are tied to a particular service provider, they start to tighten the screws, be it based on cost or the already decided service levels.
The security of your data is another important thing you need to look at. As we know that Indian government/public sector companies were not going on cloud considering the fact that the data would be stored outside the country and the law of the land my prevail. So, Microsoft has recently started their India datacenter based out of Pune. Now if government sector is successful target, it would be a continued long term business for Microsoft. The levels of revenue for any service provider are diverse, from Iaas to PaaS to SaaS.
As the company grows, it needs to note that the usage is billed every minute for the cloud service. This was not the case for in-house servers where a bit of misuse by any employee was not chargeable to the company.
Also, the service revenue to put all the existing on-premise things on cloud for a company is not free and it is charged on a premium because of the business impact they have if not transferred correctly.

Overall, if we look at the cost of cloud services, there are many small nuances which are handy at times for company. The question of cloud being cheaper than the on-premise facility depends on the usage of the company and the current infrastructure of the company.

Internet of Things..

Any physical object being embedded with electronics device or sensors with some software code which make them exchange data, comes under the umbrella of IoT. This is one of the latest trends in the IT world and companies like Cisco and IBM are having dedicated units for their advancement in this domain. As per a report by Gartner, experts estimate that the IoT will consist of almost 50 billion objects by 2020. That is big, really big.

As per a list by OECD in 2015, South Korea has the highest number of devices online per inhabitant. It has some 40 devices per 100 people. India ranks way down at 24th position with 0.6 devices per 100 people. ABI Research estimates that more than 30 billion devices will be wirelessly connected to the Internet of Things by 2020. In an active move to accommodate new and emerging technological innovation, the UK Government, in their 2015 budget, allocated £40,000,000 towards research into the Internet of Things.  

The ability to network embedded devices with limited CPU, memory and power resources means that IoT finds applications in nearly every field. On the other hand, IoT systems could also be responsible for performing actions, not just sensing things. Shopping systems could track your shopping usage and link it to your mobile number and  then advice you the next time you are going for shopping by an SMS to your phone. Another excellent application that the Internet of Things brings to the picture is home security solutions. Your water will be warm as soon as you get up in the morning for the shower.

As I have some assignments to complete for tomorrow, I wouldn't be able to write more. But be assured, IoT is the next thing and we all need to be ready for it. By the time I would enter into the professional world, it would be a hot cake.