Some of our more cutting-edge clients (thanks Dave!) asked how we might help them leverage Cloud Computing to host their applications. The advantages of cloud computing are easy to see because the cost of storage and computing is measured in pennies per hour/gigabyte and works especially well for reporting and analysis applications.

Here are some examples (a la Mastercard style!)

Applications that have archives that are rarely used but have sophisticated, heavy duty backup machines to support them. Instead, move them to the cloud where they are restored for temporary use when needed

$ .10 (Storage costs per GB per month)

Development team needs 8 weeks lead time from their data center to setup new development/test or production environments. Instead, start as many servers as you need in minutes on the cloud

$ .45 (per hour of server uptime)

Applications that run the monthly close from a workstation, *cough* I mean, server, that sits under the CFOs desk. Instead, move them to the cloud with built in reliability and disaster recover readiness

$ 334 (Server usage cost per month)

Applications that only get used heavily during the budgeting process, using large servers but stay idle the rest of the year. Instead, move it to the cloud and keep the machine up only for 2 months of the budget cycle

$ 669 (Server usage per month)

Peace of mind, reduced expense and no capital outlay

Priceless

These economics are fundamentally changing the way we build all kinds of applications, let alone datawarehousing, reporting and analytics. And don't let the prices fool you, the CPU and memory of these on demand virtual instances are on par with intel machines in any data center.

In addition to the above use cases, simpler examples include quick proof of concepts, development and test environments. But why stop there? if it is working, why not migrate it to production as well? But sticky issues around enterprise software licensing in the clouds remain, so we were pleasantly surprised by Oracle's announcement that they are supporting the licensing in the cloud. Its still not a true metered licensing that would work seamlessly for a cloud platform, but it's a start.

Security is also a concern, but cloud computing providers such as Amazon and Google are makingsignificant efforts to secure the infrastructure (Amazon's security whitepaper). According to Techcrunch, a good chunk of Amazon web service customers are banks and pharmaceutical firms.

So, knowing this was an idea whose time had come - we stuck our heads in the clouds (sad pun intended) and used our expertise in implementing, scaling, and managing BI applications to layer Oracle EPM on top of Amazon'scloud computing service EC2. Other BI stacks like HyperRoll will follow soon. Our efforts have resulted in a fullymanaged, top to bottom platform that includes the OS, datawarehouse, OLAP reporting infrastructure and is now ready for your application. This is the cubeFlex platform, powered by Amazon Web Services! 

To learn more about cubeFlex, I would like to invite you to apply for access to one of the Oracle EPM beta instances by signing up here. The instance has a full stack of Oracle EPM software ready to be configured. Apologies in advance, because interest has been high we may have to put you on awaiting list.