Unknown user base – Think of Cloud!!
As Cloud computing is gaining momentum and slated to become mainstream, the most prominent question that every one asking today is “Which applications are most suitable on Cloud? Which are first to go on Cloud? What are the characteristic that one should look for?
While there are many dimensions to this, I found applications where you cannot estimate the user base upfront are the most prominent candidates to be deployed on Cloud.
One of the key USP of Cloud is “Elasticity”, Ability to scale up and down with just change in configs.
There are several applications which once floated on internet, one wouldn’t know how the response to it would be in terms # of hits, # of logins/registrations, etc.
Today with typical multi tier web architecture, if the application has to be provisioned for internet scale users, one has to do lot of upfront investment in terms of sizing, deployment planning, invest efforts in not only building the right architecture but also planning deployment using scaling techniques like load balancing, clustering, mirroring, etc.
Recently we played online “Housie”, it was an interesting experience to play it online, if somebody has to launch such application on internet and invite users to participate and announce prizes; the online application should have the ability to automatically scale up or down based on the user response. While upfront huge investment in hardware/software can become hindrance or limitation to such ideas, Cloud does this automatically and not only opens up a huge opportunity for such applications but also enthusiastic Entrepreneurs’ can quickly start business with an idea without having to worry about too many infrastructural issues.
If one looks around, one can think of several applications with similar patterns like conducting “Online Exams - Common Admission Test (CAT)”, “Polling Results site”, “Stock trading applications”, “Online Tax”, “Job Search sites” , “Collaboration/professional networking apps like Orkut, LinkedIn, messenger, email, etc.”, and the list goes on.
How about Intranet or Intra Enterprise apps?Most suited candidates would be applications which cuts across departments and or used extensively during certain period of year like Project Management portals, Performance appraisal systems, etc.
Common characteristics are “Unknown upfront user base”. Does it sound like Today’s small caps with potential to become tomorrow’s large caps?
Does Identifying Cloud candidate app need an approach similar to fund manager? What do you say?
