Cloud computing is an evolutionary approach to delivery of software as a service, accessed and hosted through the internet. The software, or application, is owned and maintained by someone else, you do not own it. You pay a fixed subscription fee, in general meaning you pay monthly, to access something that someone else has created for you. Essentially, you don’t have to buy anything, you pay for the amount that you choose to use, and you don’t have to maintain or operate a system. In regards to paying for what you choose to use, there is no complex routine to scale to a higher usage level, scaling is, in essence, part of the cloud approach. A built-in scalability that requires nothing but use. This scalability is what makes the cloud concept so ideal for it’s users. The fixed subscription fee can be ideal, because traditional licensed software is, more often than not, cash up front. The amount of usage is not taken into consideration, this can be bad for users who have a very low usage level, and still have to pay a high fixed fee, but equally, it can be a positive for those with a very high usage level, and aren’t made to pay a much higher fee as a consequence.
In the case of E-Commerce, typical infrastructure investments can subtract from the total available capital of a business, adopting the cloud computing model allows a company to not only relate to a scale of use that fits them, but also be more responsive to changing market dynamics. Not only that, it allows for more rapid development to business changes and the ability to adapt, change and extend existing applications!
