The value of cloud vs. data center consolidation
Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Tom Nolle.
Distributed computing, falling technology prices and budget freedom have led to a proliferation of application-specific servers. For CIOs, this has triggered major increases in support costs from not only the multiplication of servers but their distribution throughout company locations, often away from central technology support resources.
These platforms were underused and often failed to conform to company standards, making compliance auditing and security difficult. Complications and costs created the drive for “server consolidation,” the primary stimulus for interest in server virtualization and cloud computing.
Server consolidation virtualizes a central “farm” of servers that replace a large community of disorderly, distributed servers. Cloud computing offers a similar value: replacing underused and hard-to-support local computing with a hosted service. Companies can eliminate many application-specific servers using either consolidation or cloudsourcing, so it’s essential to pick the best strategy…