ITE221 – Fall 2011 – Chapter 14

Site reviewed: http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/1355038/Hardware-standardization-benefits-cloud-computing-virtualization

For Chapter 14, I visited SearchCloudComputing, a TechTarget website (free registration is required), to read an article on standardizing corporate IT hardware as applied to cloud computing. In the article, the author (Bridget Botelho) argues that standardizing server hardware has made sense in the past and makes even more as more and more companies move to a cloud-computing environment. She states that virtualization and cloud computing will drive standardization, since organizations will want to move their applications and data from one cloud environment to another, which will be much simpler if the organization’s hardware is relatively standardized (as opposed to a collection of widely-disparate parts). She does point out that even as virtualization and cloud computing push organizations towards standardization, OEMs are producing more and more different hardware options for various market segments – branch offices, smaller businesses, data centers, etc. – leading at least part of the market away from complete standardization.

Ultimately, I think that there are pros and cons to the argument that standardization will be helpful to organizations wanting to get into cloud computing. I don’t believe that complete standardization is the answer, personally – there are always going to be market segments where it just won’t make sense to buy a server rack to meet organizational computing needs, because a laptop is a better fit. However, for a given market segment, specifically, that segment looking to use cloud computing – standardization of associated hardware, at least to some extent, does make sense to me.