I'm sure you've heard all the Cloud buzz but what does it mean to you?

First, let's try and clear the air as to what this Cloud thing is. Every computing system has three primary resource components (these are CPU, Disk, and Memory). The Cloud allows you to enhance your capacity to any or all of these components. In some cases a Cloud provider (like Google and Salesforce.com) will provide a software application built on top of the aforementioned resource components. This is sometimes called Software As A Servers (or SAAS).

There are several providers of Cloud services. The largest providers are Amazon, Microsoft, Rackspace, and VMWare.  The largest SAAS providers are Google and Salesforce.com.

If Cloud services interest you but you don't know where to start I would suggest you start with a small focused project or task and work from there. Taking this approach makes the whole thing less intimidating and allows or some short term success (or failure) and limits your risk. For example, let's say you want to have an offsite copy of some critical data. Not all of us have remote locations that we can copy data to, but "renting" some hard drive space in the Cloud makes this achievable where it may not have been before. An office fire could destroy everything and having an automated solution where the critical data is prepared and copied each day is a great insurance policy for your business.

If you're looking for help feel free to drop us a line and we can discuss what you have in mind.