How fog computing disrupts the cloud services market
This article is the first in a series devoted to the cloud technologies market and the role of fog computing for its participants.
Today, the opportunities presented by cloud services and data storage are transforming business processes, just as the introduction of computers once did. But for business, one unresolved question remains extremely important: how to provide scalability for cloud technology. We are creating the SONM platform in order to solve this challenge.
As the burden on IT increases, cloud technologies are becoming more expensive and are eating up a substantial part of business revenue. The more computing power a company needs, the more the cost of renting cloud infrastructure increases.
The high cost of the services of cloud providers is a result of the vast sums they have spent on the creation of data centers, the creation of network infrastructure and the purchase of server equipment.
SONM offers the use of free capacity of hardware that is already running: PCs, servers and mining farms for fog computing.
Modern cloud technologies have two key aspects: technical and economical. The technical aspect lies in the fact that whereas earlier all computing was done locally on computers within a corporate network, today it is possible to “outsource” this work to data centers. If earlier users installed Microsoft Office on every computer, then now they also have access to the Google Docs and Office 365 cloud services. These services operate remotely and have no direct relationship to the computer, and all operations are carried out in the browser or on remote servers.
From an economic point of view, this fundamental transformation is manifesting itself in the fact that in practically every sphere we are witnessing a move from an ownership model to a temporary use model. The most obvious example of this today is car-sharing, but the same process is underway in IT: while earlier products were sold for a one-time payment, now the model is based on monthly subscription. This means that CAPEX — one-time capital expenditure on the purchase of software — is being squeezed out by OPEX, monthly operational costs.
