On-demand computing allows companies to access computing resources as needed, reducing hardware and software licensing costs. Thin clients in large organizations can make use of resources from the network. On-demand computing can also reduce energy consumption and server footprint. Virtualization and new technologies allow for even more efficient use of resources. The trend towards on-demand computing is expected to continue with the release of new technologies.
On-demand computing is a business computing model that allows companies to provide access to computing resources as they become needed, rather than on a full-time basis. This way, the company can save money on hardware and software licensing, among other things.
A common application of on-demand processing might be found in a hospital setting or in very large organizations. Computers used in this type of environment typically depend on other computers to provide them with most of the resources they need. These “thin clients” can make a rudimentary copy of an operating system and use any other resources needed from a location on the network.
Operating in an on-demand computing business model can help reduce licensing costs if your applications are configured in a terminal services environment. Licenses are available on an as-needed basis, but in some cases may be kept in a pool to allow all users to pull from available copies only when the application is used, reducing the total license count. This style of processing can also reduce the overhead of managing an organization’s environment and energy consumption. This is possible because the applications used can be installed once in a server farm and distributed using on-demand tools, such as Citrix or other terminal services applications to present the application to users. This reduces the number of times an installation or deployment is performed.
In regards to reducing power consumption, thin clients consume much less power than a full client and can greatly reduce an organization’s footprint.
Many large vendors such as HP, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and IBM are working to create as many uses and scenarios as possible for their on-demand computing products. As more of these products become available and easily adaptable to an on-demand environment, more and more companies may be looking to on-demand computing as the way forward for their future. In the future, even more virtualization could become widespread. This technology helps significantly reduce an organization’s server footprint by consolidating multiple physical servers into virtual machines running on a single physical hardware platform, sharing the hardware among multiple hosted servers.
Some of the latest technologies allow thin clients to boot from the network and load an operating system image from the network along with other applications that the user may need.
The compute-on-demand business model doesn’t appear to be disappearing with the release of Microsoft Windows 2008 and Hyper-V, server virtualization will likely become even more widespread and allow many more organizations to take advantage of compute-on-demand and virtualization.
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