On-Demand Computing in cloud computing

On-demand computing is a business computing model in which computing resources are made available to the user on an “as needed” basis.  Rather than all at once, on-demand computing allows cloud hosting companies to provide their clients with access to computing resources as they become necessary.
 

On-demand Computing is the latest model in enterprise systems. It is related to Cloud computing. It means IT resources can be provided on demand by a Cloud provider.

In an enterprise system demand for computing resources varies from time to time. In such a scenario, On-demand computing makes sure that servers and IT resources are provisioned to handle the increase/decrease in demand.

A cloud provider maintains a poll of resources. The pool of resources contains networks, servers, storage, applications and services. This pool can serve the varying demand of resources and computing by various enterprise clients.

There are many concepts like- grid computing, utility computing, autonomic computing etc that are similar to on-demand computing.

This is the most popular trend in computing model as of now.

What Are the Advantages of On-Demand Computing?

The on-demand computing model was developed to overcome the common challenge that enterprises encountered of not being able to meet unpredictable, fluctuating computing demands efficiently.  Businesses today need to be agile and need the ability to scale resources easily and quickly based on rapidly changing market needs.  Because an enterprise’s demand for computing resources can vary dramatically from one period to another, maintaining sufficient resources to meet peak requirements can be costly.  However, with on-demand computing, companies can cut costs by maintaining minimal computing resources until they run into the need to increase them while only paying for their use.

Industry experts predict on-demand computing to soon be the most widely used computing model for enterprises.  In fact, IBM’s vice-president of technology and strategy stated, “The technology is at a point where we can start to move into an era of on-demand computing.  I give it between two and four years to reach a level of maturity.”