When I first started out with the Internet in the 90’s it really was all about finding a good web host for your website. It also meant finding a host that could handle some of the earlier web apps of the day such as a message board or a content management system. Things have changed a lot over the last 20 years where a lot of what we did in the 90’s is a click of a button when back then we had to write code and tinker around with things to make it work. Things are a lot easier these days more than it ever has been.
Gaming meets the cloud
As a SugarCRM Partner, we’ve had our feet on two sides of the fence for quite some time. We have many of our clients who prefer the world of on-premise and others that prefer the cloud. There are many reasons to consider either but as technology continues to grow, a lot of what we work with today will move to the cloud. I’m not much of a video gamer as much as I was as a kid. It did perk my attention up when new cloud offerings include offering high definition video gaming by streaming over the cloud (see Google Stadia). This service promises to offer the high end power you would typically purchase in a high end computer or video game console with a simple streaming service. You pay a monthly fee to get access to all of that horse power and the best news is you could play some of these high ends games on your mobile phone.
If video gaming is moving to the cloud, just imagine what it means for business. As I mentioned earlier, there are two camps. You have those that want on-premise for a number of reasons including privacy, data locale and in the case of Sugar, customization capabilities. The promoters of the cloud counter that being in the cloud means no IT staff to manage infrastructure, access to quicker updates and more features as you integrate into more clouds such as Amazon Web Services.
So which way do you go?
I still think there are use cases for both on-premise and cloud separately. I think moving towards the cloud ultimately benefits a business from a cost perspective in a great way. Just imagine a business with 200 employees, a dedicated team of IT professionals managing the infrastructure, performing updates…etc. It all adds up and most of those things would be completely automated in a cloud environment. Your subscription fee would cover the cost of a shared IT resource team to manage all of the complexities of backup, upgrades and enhancements. I think without a doubt, moving to the cloud is not only the future, but it’s here. Just ask any gamer out there as they prepare to shed their video game consoles for the cloud.