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Cloud computing is booming in developed markets thanks to demand from small and medium enterprises, or SMEs. With IT and the internet critical parts of almost any company these days, a service that can reduce costs is going to be welcomed.
By signing up to public cloud providers such as Microsoft’s Azure or Amazon Web Services, SMEs no longer need to buy servers or manage software and can outsource the expense and headache of maintaining a technical team to someone else. Ireland-based O’Reilly Media estimates that fi rms can save up to 30% on IT costs over a three year period by employing cloud services rather than using on-site equipment.
The global market has exploded. Almost one in three US fi rms use some form of cloud. China is catching up, albeit slowly. Microsoft says a large portion of the SME clients using Azure in the Chinese market are developers. Tech costs, paid incremen- tally and moved to operational costs, are no longer a barrier to innovation. Chinese e-commerce fi rm Kuke Industry says that using Alibaba’s cloud unit is “much faster than our own server, and has saved us lots of money on tech and personnel.”
Technology startups in China, a growing scene in Beijing and Shenzhen, are huge users of clouds. These services give clients instant access to server power and enable them to instantly expand or shrink their pool of machines, paying only for what they need at any given point. All this makes it possible to launch a serious startup without serious capital. Whereas in the past new companies had to invest in expensive equipment in order to get off the ground, “the biggest line items in these companies now is rent and food... A decade ago, I don’t think you could write a line of code for less than US$1 million,” former Google executive Chris Sacca said in a media interview in 2010.
By signing up to public cloud providers such as Microsoft’s Azure or Amazon Web Services, SMEs no longer need to buy servers or manage software and can outsource the expense and headache of maintaining a technical team to someone else. Ireland-based O’Reilly Media estimates that fi rms can save up to 30% on IT costs over a three year period by employing cloud services rather than using on-site equipment.
The global market has exploded. Almost one in three US fi rms use some form of cloud. China is catching up, albeit slowly. Microsoft says a large portion of the SME clients using Azure in the Chinese market are developers. Tech costs, paid incremen- tally and moved to operational costs, are no longer a barrier to innovation. Chinese e-commerce fi rm Kuke Industry says that using Alibaba’s cloud unit is “much faster than our own server, and has saved us lots of money on tech and personnel.”
Technology startups in China, a growing scene in Beijing and Shenzhen, are huge users of clouds. These services give clients instant access to server power and enable them to instantly expand or shrink their pool of machines, paying only for what they need at any given point. All this makes it possible to launch a serious startup without serious capital. Whereas in the past new companies had to invest in expensive equipment in order to get off the ground, “the biggest line items in these companies now is rent and food... A decade ago, I don’t think you could write a line of code for less than US$1 million,” former Google executive Chris Sacca said in a media interview in 2010.