AN INSIGHT into the buzz surrounding the concept of ‘cloud computing’ has been given to a local audience.

The much-talked-about technology is supposed to revolutionise computing in the near future and lead to huge cost savings for businesses, no matter what their size.

But in many cases it is still not understood in enough detail, according to Wayne Horkan, chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems, who is part of the UK Cloud Computing Forum.

He spoke to representatives from a range of Guernsey businesses on the subject earlier this week at an Itex Thought Leadership Event and outlined the benefits of adopting such a system, which essentially sees resources shared across a network where users pay only for what they use.

But even that definition does not do the technology justice, said Mr Horkan (pictured).

‘It’s much more than dynamically-shared services. It’s about economics and flexibility. The term cloud computing has been around for quite a while but it’s only in the last couple of years that things have started to change.

‘There’s been a convergence of technologies. People have become more used to outsourcing to partners and they are demanding more from their IT. They expect better levels of performance and availability and don’t want to have to wait six weeks, for example, for a new server to be made ready.’

For small start-up companies in particular, cloud computing can be a quick win and one that many new businesses are adopting.