Is on-demand elasticity the only major feature of cloud computing that cannot be easily found with traditional hosting?

Question

I am trying to compare cloud computing (on EC2) against traditional hosting on the following grounds to determine whether any of these features present unique benefits in the world of cloud computing versus more traditional hosting strategies:

• Real-time monitoring
• Server virtualization
• Deployment automation
• High performance computing
• On-demand elasticity

As far as I can see, (1) monitoring is just as easy in both areas; (2) server virtualization is also present in both areas thanks to server farms which allow traditional hosts to beef up resources at will - and of course the same applies in the cloud; (3) deployment can be equally automated in both areas since the same tools often can be applied to both; (4) in the area of high performance computing maybe you get an extra boost from the cloud theoretically but I'm not so sure - you have to pay for that boost whether it's the cloud or not; (5) elasticity is the only real benefit that i can see of moving to the cloud - resources can be pumped up at the flick of a switch.

So my question is, is this really the only benefit of cloud computing from this list that offers a real benefit over traditional hosting or is my analysis flawed?

Answer 1

Not only do you have elasticity, but you have, in theory at least, a greater total amount of resources available than you could have with any static hosting solution.

Also, a side effect of elasticity is decreased electricity usage, which may or may not be a factor for you.

Answer 2

The company I work for is getting ready to move from self-hosting to a cloud provider (EC2). One thing I am greatly looking forward to is not having to worry about managing hardware. I don't need to worry about lead time for ordering parts. The need to have spare parts on-hand to cover unexpected hardware failures is gone. I don't need to worry about UPS or any power. We aren't big enough for cooling to be a concern... but now we never will have to worry about that either.

Answer 3

The main difference here is the cost model. While it's true you can gain all of the same benefits from your list with both Cloud Computing and traditional hosting, you pay up front for traditional hosting. You have to buy and maintain your own servers, while cloud computing allows you to pay a variable cost.

This is the reason cloud computing is so attractive for startup companies.

Answer 4

Depending on your own datacenter costs, a cloud computing platform can be much cheaper, as you don't need anybody to manage physical devices. Cloud services can provide bulk computing resources at likely a lower cost than you can provide if you bought the machines and hooked them up yourself.

Answer 5

Assuming your "traditional hosting" involves a single server, there is a very real benefit to high-performance computing in cloud / grid environments. Specifically, virtually unlimited performance, since you can have n cores working at the same time, whereas with a single server, you are limited by the maximum server capacity.

To put it more clearly, if the most powerful computer in the world is a 1000 - core system with 20 terabytes of RAM, then that's the most power you could have on a hosted server. However, a cloud consisting of 100 of these machines could do 100x the work in almost the same amount of time.

Additionally, it's generally less expensive (financially) to distribute work across multiple smaller machines than it is to get one powerful system capable of doing the same work.

And if you'd like to talk about disaster recovery....clouds can be geographically distributed, meaning if a tornado rips your data center out of the ground, plucks the server into little shards of metal and plastic, and embeds them in telephone poles...you experience a slight dip in your performance because your other 99 servers are still operating.

Answer 6

Elasticity of the computing, storage and network capacities is just a feature. Yet, it brings a huge number of economical benefits for the companies. For example, by implementing a Cloud Bursting scenario a small SaaS company could easily and cheaply handle traffic and usage spikes that might take an expensive hosted solution down.