The pace at which we’ve come to regard cloud technologies as an everyday utility is staggering. But the combination of maturing technology and market dynamics is driving further change in the way the cloud operates, with particular developments in on-demand cloud computing.
On-demand computing is a broad category that includes concepts such as grid computing, utility computing, autonomic computing, and adaptive management. So what do cloud customers actually expect from a true on-demand service – and is there anything out there that fits the bill?
So what’s happening in on-demand cloud computing?
To date, on-demand computing has mainly focused on automation software, scheduling software, and scalability management. And these features are heavily associated with reducing costs of server usage as well as wasted server usage. Specifically, many cloud users may not realise that when servers are not in use, they’re still switched on.
This means that cloud users are paying for servers they’re not actually using and for which they are incurring unnecessary fees.
This is where apps that can provide better control of servers are coming into their own, particularly for smaller companies with limited manpower or technical resources.
So if we start with automation, servers can be automatically turned off based on low usage rates, meaning you would no longer incur unnecessary costs for unused servers.
In a similar fashion, scheduling can provide the same benefits, although you would need to manually programme servers to be active for particular periods of time. For example, if an organization only needed servers to be on between the hours of 9-5, then servers could be scheduled to be active for these particular hours.
Scheduling allows end users to plan ahead and tailor their cloud server usage to their day-to-day activities and usually includes some level of automation. Ultimately, this means you avoid both wastage server usage and unnecessary costs.
But scheduling server activity is nothing new and is widely available.
So let’s go one step further. Imagine if in addition to automating and scheduling server activity, you could turn your servers on and off instantaneously, just for when they were needed and for no longer?
Such are the potential savings from switching virtual servers off when they are not required that products that enable real time on-demand scheduling are rapidly being developed for the marketplace. In fact, many industry experts expect on-demand computing to become the most popular cloud computing model within the next few years.
Real time, on-demand control
Having such real-time, on-demand control of server on/off states would provide significant cost savings, as well as working flexibility. For example, it would enable late-working employees to have servers turn on to finish up their work, and turn off again when they leave the premises.
On-demand control of cloud servers also provides huge benefits when it comes to testing and development. Speed and agility in the testing environment is paramount to ensuring products are developed quickly to enable a short time to market. However, in efforts to achieve speed, flexibility and convenience in cloud computing, the corresponding increase in AWS server costs usually dents enthusiasm. But with on-demand control of cloud servers, the potential to achieve huge cost savings opens up the possibility to reinvest in provisioning bigger and better servers. So for no extra cost, developers can achieve a more agile and flexible testing environment.
But do products like this exist that can provide all of these services in one app – automation, scheduling and on-demand control?
Actually, there is – and we believe it is the first web app to enable real time on-demand control of servers that can be utilised by non-technical staff once it’s customised to the needs of the company. And that product is Cloud Machine Manager.
Cloud Machine Manager uses Scheduling, Automation and a unique On-Demand feature to reduce AWS EC2 bills by anything up to 90%.
It’s currently only available to Amazon Web Services users, but this will change, says the company, as the service is rolled out.
