There has been loads of hype surrounding cloud computing within the business world, but our industry is far more complex than the average office set up, so is it a concept that works for shipping?

Our friends at BisonGrid have a rather neat description that might ring some bells . . .

“The term Cloud computing comes from how the Internet has traditionally been symbolised in network diagrams and system designs using the image of a Cloud. In short cloud computing uses hosted resources located in large secure data centres to provide computer platforms, software, and information to end user devices – a bit like the electricity grid. Cloud technology itself has been defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as follows:

?Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources? that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three delivery models, and four deployment methods.?

It then gives the essential characteristics as:
? On-demand
? Ubiquitous network access
? Location-independent resource pooling
? Rapid elasticity
? Measured service

Another, more straightforward, example is the cloud as a commercial entity that enables users to purchase computer services and have them delivered as a service online.”

On-demand? Ubiquitous network access? Location-independent resource pooling? Isn’t this exactly what we need when managing ship to shore data synchronisation?

The reality is that we’ve been using the cloud for a number of years to manage distributed networks, its just the rest of the business world has finally wised up to the efficiency it can bring. At iFleet it may only be a small part of what we do, but it certainly has a role to play, contact us to find out more.