The Economics of Cloud Computing An Overview for Decision Makers Bill Williams Foreword by George Reese, author of Cloud Application Architectures The decision-maker’s guide to cloud computing: from making the case to managing the transition This concise book delivers the insight and tools you need to make intelligent decisions about cloud computing and effectively manage the transition to this new paradigm. Bill Williams explains how cloud computing platforms are transforming business IT and helps you fully understand the economies of scale and other benefits associated with “the cloud.” Williams defines and explains cloud computing platforms and technologies, analyzes the costs associated with the IT supply chain, and (using industry standard metrics) creates a process for measuring the value of implementing cloud service models. He presents realistic and up-to-date ROI and NPV calculations comparing cloud strategies with conventional investments in owned/leased hardware. Through additional examples, he addresses costs and savings related to software licensing and disaster recovery/high availability, offering even deeper practical insight into the financial impact of cloud computing. Writing for business leaders and “in-the-trenches” managers, Williams outlines the impact of cloud computing on the IT supply chain by contrasting legacy processes and systems with cloud computing implementations. To simplify deployment, Williams presents easy-to-use tables, a decision-maker checklist, and a comprehensive collection of additional resources for further study. · Understand today’s leading cloud service and deployment models · Identify the major characteristics of cloud computing platforms · Use key performance/success indicators to measure IT performance and influence business strategies · Quantify the baseline costs of your current IT value chain · Use TCO, the payback method, ROI, NPV, and other metrics to justify cloud deployments · Calculate the total financial impact of migrating to “the cloud” · Place cloud computing in the historical context of technological revolutions · Recognize the long-term social and global benefits of cheap and ubiquitous computing This volume is in the Network Business Series offered by Cisco Press®. Books in this series provide IT executives, decision makers, and networking professionals with pertinent information about today’s most important technologies and business strategies.

To readers who could be merely surfing the pages to catch a quick glimpse as to what cloud computing is all about,to the more serious and corporate users,the book is expected to provide at least a humble modicum of nourishment to set them off on a journey that would no doubt help them achieve success to the cloud and beyond.The book focus on the technical aspects of cloud insofar as speeding up the process of grasping the concerned facts and the underlying economic benefits of cloud computing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services, GECON 2014, held in Cardiff, UK, in September 2014. The 8 revised full papers and 7 paper-in-progress presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 24 submissions. The presentation sessions that have been set up are: Cloud Adoption, Work in Progress on Market Dynamics, Cost Optimization, Work in Progress on Pricing, Contracts and Service Selection and Economic Aspects of Quality of Service.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services, GECON 2017, held in Biarritz, France, in September 2017. The 10 full papers and 10 short papers presented together with 3 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. This volume of the GECON 2017 proceedings has been structured in sections following the sessions that comprised the conference program: Pricing in Cloud and Quality of Service, Work in Progress on Service Management, Work in Progress on Business models and Community Cooperation, Work in Progress on Energy Efficiency and Resource Management, Resource Management, Edge Computing, Cloud Federation; and Work in Progress on Service Selection and Coordination.

Cloud Computing, a new prototype of computing infrastructure provision, gives an assurance of fulfilling a dream of optimal utilization of computer utilities for an economical and smooth functioning of businesses. In Cloud Computing, the economic aspect along with cloud offerings is a research topic in itself. This research presents an overview of the economic aspects involved. Cloud architecture brings with it an assurance of a low-cost delivery, speedy implementation, enhanced flexibility and thus has been adopted widely in a very short period of time. Statistics show that there is a possibility of the cloud services market reaching a level of 160 billion dollars by the year 2020. Although cloud computing technology is being widely accepted, the research is still in the beginning stage. This research attempts to bring out the viability of adoption of this technology based on suitability index and uses further, parameters like number of servers, geographical coverage, extent of data to be migrated, size of operations of the companies and the various financial parameters like ROI (Return on Investment), Payback period, NPV (Net Present Value). However there is more in-depth research that requires to go into the details of company business and gaining further insight into cloud adoption. Here, the study encompasses 35 companies with a view to provide different available variations in terms of all the above mentioned parameters in an attempt to aid the decision making regarding adoption of cloud architecture. The research highlights the reasons for the adoption of cloud architecture by different companies from the chosen 35 companies. The researcher is optimistic that this research will definitely prove helpful in taking the correct decision and will help more number of companies to implement the cloud technology and reap the benefits of the same. Keywords: Cloud Computing, Architecture, Suitability, ROI, Adoption of cloud or Migration.

This book constitutes the refereed post-proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services, GECON 2011, held in Paphos, Cyprus, in December 2011. The 9 revised full papers presented together with 5 work in progress papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 27 papers. The papers are organized in topical sections on market mechanisms and negotiation; cost models, charging, and trading platforms; resource allocation, scheduling, and admission control; and two work in progress sections: risk assessment and economics of cloud services; and cost-aware adoption of cloud services.

The Encyclopedia of Cloud Computing provides IT professionals, educators, researchers and students with a compendium of cloud computing knowledge. Authored by a spectrum of subject matter experts in industry and academia, this unique publication, in a single volume, covers a wide range of cloud computing topics, including technological trends and developments, research opportunities, best practices, standards, and cloud adoption. Providing multiple perspectives, it also addresses questions that stakeholders might have in the context of development, operation, management, and use of clouds. Furthermore, it examines cloud computing's impact now and in the future. The encyclopedia presents 56 chapters logically organized into 10 sections. Each chapter covers a major topic/area with cross-references to other chapters and contains tables, illustrations, side-bars as appropriate. Furthermore, each chapter presents its summary at the beginning and backend material, references and additional resources for further information.

This book provides readers with an overview of Cloud Computing, starting with historical background on mainframe computers and early networking protocols, leading to current concerns such as hardware and systems security, performance, emerging areas of IoT, Edge Computing etc. Readers will benefit from the in-depth discussion of cloud computing usage and the underlying architecture, with focus on best practices for using a dynamic cloud infrastructure, cloud operations management and cloud security. The authors explain carefully the “why’s and how’s” of Cloud Computing, so engineers will find this book and invaluable introduction to the topic.

Professionals in the interdisciplinary field of computer science focus on the design, operation, and maintenance of computational systems and software. Methodologies and tools of engineering are utilized alongside the technological advancements of computer applications to develop efficient and precise databases of information. The Handbook of Research on Innovations in Systems and Software Engineering combines relevant research from all facets of computer programming to provide a comprehensive look at the challenges and changes in the field. With information spanning topics such as design models, cloud computing, and security, this handbook is an essential reference source for academicians, researchers, practitioners, and students interested in the development and design of improved and effective technologies.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services, GECON 2016, held in Athens. Greece, in September 2016. The 11 revised full papers and 11 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. This volume has been structured following the seven sessions that comprised the conference program (three of which are work-in-progress sessions): Session 1: Business Models Session 2: Work in Progress on Quality of Services and Service Level Agreements Session 3: Work in Progress on Cloud Economics Session 4: Energy Consumption Session 5: Resource Allocation Session 6: Work in Progress on Resource Allocation Session 7: Cloud Applications