Three main benefits are articulated for Cloud Computing:
1. Cheaper computing: Cloud providers can take advantage of economies of scale in hardware, power, and system administration to drive computing costs lower than individual firms can.
2. Switch from fixed to variable costs: Previously firms had to make large up-front investments to grow or experiment, discouraging both activities. Now firms can do this at a low initial marginal cost.
3. Increased capabilities: Cloud providers can better integrate tools, giving (particularly small) businesses the ability to do new types of tasks. This may be particularly valuable for tasks that require rare skills, for which many firms might have trouble hiring.
• According to industry experts, once the cost of using a public cloud provider gets above a few thousand dollars per month, cost effectiveness actually favors in-house servers.
• Recent research suggests that a single machine can run many tasks faster than hundreds of Cloud Computing machines clustered together because of the overhead required to split the job over many computers
This project aims to make clear where the benefits of cloud computing are, and for whom they can be achieved.
However even these claims about cost effectiveness and capabilities are controversial: