Ariba India

8th Floor, Tower One, Vatika Business Park, Sector 49, Sohna Road, Badshahpur, Gurgaon - Haryana 122001 Phone: 0124 - 4135400 Fax: 0124 4365964, 0124 4016023 www.ariba.com

What Is Cloud Computing?

Everyone in the technology world is talking about it and a lot of people in the business world are asking the same question, What is cloud computing, and what does it mean for my business? Cloud computing platforms are growing in popularity, but why? What unique advantages does a cloud computing architecture offer to companies in todays economic climate? And what just what is cloud computing, anyway? Lets explore the cloud computing infrastructure and its impact on critically important areas to IT, like security, infrastructure investments, business application development, and more. Most IT departments are forced to spend a significant portion of their time on frustrating implementation, maintenance, and upgrade projects that too often dont add significant value to the companys bottom line. Increasingly, IT teams are turning to cloud computing technology to minimize the time spent on lower-value activities and allow IT to focus on strategic activities with greater impact on the business. Read more The fundamental cloud computing infrastructure has won over the CIOs of some of the worlds largest organizationsthese once-skeptical executives never looked back after experiencing firsthand the host of benefits delivered by cloud computing technology. Proven Web-services integration. By their very nature, cloud computing technology is much easier and quicker to integrate with your other enterprise applications (both traditional software and cloud computing infrastructure-based), whether third-party or homegrown. World-class service delivery. Cloud computing infrastructures offer much greater scalability, complete disaster recovery, and impressive uptime numbers. No hardware or software to install: a 100% cloud computing infrastructure. The beauty of cloud computing technology is its simplicity and in the fact that it requires significantly fewer capital expenditures to get up and running. Faster and lower-risk deployment. You can get up and running in a fraction of the time with a cloud computing infrastructure. No more waiting months or years and spending millions of dollars before anyone gets to log into your new solution. Your cloud computing technology applications are live in a matter of weeks or months, even with extensive customization or integration. Support for deep customizations. Some IT professionals mistakenly think that cloud computing technology is difficult or impossible to customize extensively, and therefore is not a good choice for complex enterprises. The cloud computing infrastructure not only allows deep customization and application configuration, it preserves all those customizations even during upgrades. And even better, cloud computing technology is ideal for application development to support your organizations evolving needs. Empowered business users. Cloud computing technology allows on-the-fly, point-andclick customization and report generation for business users, so IT doesnt spend half its time making minor changes and running reports. Automatic upgrades that dont impact IT resources. Cloud computing infrastructures put an end to a huge IT dilemma: If we upgrade to the latest-and-greatest version of the application, well be forced to spend time and resources (that we dont have) to rebuild our customizations and integrations. Cloud computing technology doesnt force you to decide

Ariba India
8th Floor, Tower One, Vatika Business Park, Sector 49, Sohna Road, Badshahpur, Gurgaon - Haryana 122001 Phone: 0124 - 4135400 Fax: 0124 4365964, 0124 4016023 www.ariba.com

between upgrading and preserving all your hard work, because those customizations and integrations are automatically preserved during an upgrade.

A Cloud Computing Infrastructure: Whats the Value?

Cloud computing infrastructures and Ariba platform have won over the CIOs of some of the worlds largest organizations. These forward-thinking (yet extremely security-conscious) tech executives fully vetted Ariba Sourcing and realized the value cloud computing technology offers. Ariba Commerce Cloud frees companies from traditional software and its hidden costs, high failure rates, unacceptable risks, and protracted implementations. All while providing a comprehensive, flexible platform that meets the needs of businesses of every size, from the world's largest enterprises to small and mid-sized companies everywhere. Ariba Commerce Cloud minimizes the risk involved in application development and implementation. After all, technology should solve your business problems, not create more headaches. With Ariba Commerce cloud computing technology, you'll be free to focus on solving strategic problems instead of worrying about infrastructure requirements, maintenance, and upgrades. The cloud computing infrastructure also promises significant savings in administrative costs more than 50 percent in comparison to client/server software. The areas in which cloud computing saves administrative costs include: Basic customization. The Ariba Sourcing On-demand cloud computing technologys pointand-click tools empower administrators and business users to perform basic customizations themselves. Real-time reporting. Easy wizards step users through report and dashboard creation, so ITs queue is free of report requests. Security and sharing models. The sharing model built into the Ariba Sourcing cloud computing infrastructure protects sensitive data while making the management of security profiles much less time-consuming. Multiple languages and currencies. Included support for 17 languages and all currencies make managing a global application easier. No wonder so many CIOs are restructuring their companies around a cloud computing infrastructure.

Cloud Computing Technology & Application Development

Cloud computing technology is sparking a huge change in application development circles. Just like the changes that moved publishing technology from paper to bits, making it possible for us to have information about anything in the world right at our fingertips in a flash, the move to a cloud computing infrastructure for application development is making it possible to build robust, enterprise-class applications in a fraction of the time and at a much lower cost. Cloud computing technology boasts all the benefits of multitenancy, including built-in security, reliability, upgradeability, and ease of use.

Ariba India
8th Floor, Tower One, Vatika Business Park, Sector 49, Sohna Road, Badshahpur, Gurgaon - Haryana 122001 Phone: 0124 - 4135400 Fax: 0124 4365964, 0124 4016023 www.ariba.com

Out-of-the-box features such as analytics, offline access, and mobile deployment speed application development. Theres no need to worry about managing and maintaining any server inf rastructure, even as applications scale to thousands of users. You can join a community of thousands of developers also focused on business application development for cloud computing infrastructures. By eliminating the problems of traditional application development, cloud computing technology frees you to focus on developing business applications that deliver true value to your business (or your customers). The Ariba Sourcing platform lets IT innovate while avoiding the costs and headaches associated with servers, individual software solutions, middleware or point-to-point connections, upgradesand the staff Finally, working through a provider can also be the most cost-effective way for companies to obtain the latest technologies Table 1 below represents the typical short-list for selecting a cloud / Hosted solution, how are these requirements met? What must the implementation include in order to address these necessities? Service-based infrastructure Dedicated backbone spanning the globe High bandwidth, optimized route, Internet peering High-availability servers and switches Operational Support System with 24x7x365 global visibility Global mirroring and backup facility Over-provisioned, scalable bandwidth and capacity.

Ariba India
8th Floor, Tower One, Vatika Business Park, Sector 49, Sohna Road, Badshahpur, Gurgaon - Haryana 122001 Phone: 0124 - 4135400 Fax: 0124 4365964, 0124 4016023 www.ariba.com

Table 3 shows the percentage of total cost of infrastructure, deployment personnel, ongoing infrastructure and ongoing personnel when deploying applications on premises.
Table 3. On-Premise deployment cost.