What is Sharing Economy?

Definition of Sharing Economy

Sharing economy is a buzzword and trend within the IT industry that calls for using, sharing and renting IT products and services rather than buying and maintaining them in house. It enables multiple individuals and organization to collectively develop and/or consume IT and IT enabled services and applications.  Sharing economy is also known as collaborative consumption, share economy, peer economy, collaborative economy and mesh economy.

Brief Description of Sharing Economy

Sharing economy primarily helps individuals and organizations that can’t afford to buy and maintain onsite IT infrastructure and services. This concept is usually implemented through renting and using IT resources from an established IT service provider or to jointly create and consume such by a group of individuals or organizations.

Cloud computing technology focuses entirely on this phenomenon, where the individual or organization rents IT Infrastructure and services from a third party. Such infrastructure is owned by a large or established organization that rents it out in smaller scale or units to individuals or smaller organizations.