What is it?

The Cloud is just another word for the Internet.

Over time it has been adopted by the marketing department as it sounds sexier than the internet and has now moved into “common” terminology for the internet.

Logically, cloud computing is computing delivered from the internet.

Depending on the type of cloud service you opt for, you can obtain software or systems to provide:

In other words all of the things you use on your computer, plus more, without having to buy the software and have it installed.

There are other names that are used that essentially refer to the same thing, a few examples are: Software as a Service (SaaS), Application service providers (ASP), Utility Computing, SOA and Infrastructure as a Service.

Over the years, Cloud Computing has gained huge popularity, starting in the mid 1990’s when several services started to pop up such as Hotmail, one of the very first cloud computing examples.

Over time many more services have been developed, did you know that services such as Yahoo mail, Google mail, Facebook, Twitter and even Amazon are classed as examples of cloud computing?

One of the predictions I made a couple of years after starting SpiderGroup back in 2004 was that eventually the PC as we know it would be replaced by browser and internet enabled devices, this is slowly happening. I’m sure many of you already possess an iPad.

We are now at a point where you can run a business from your office, home, in fact anywhere you are. The IT industry has evolved to a point where it has significantly matured so that it isn’t an expensive black-hole of expense but a key business enabler, a utility such as water or electricity.

Why should I care?

• Save money because there is no need for Onsite servers, IT Support contracts, Backup systems and Anti-virus
• Software is always up to date
• Managed by experts
• Monthly licensing for all your IT
• Scalable per/user pricing and predictable budgeting for your business IT and support
• Increased security on your data
• In-built Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Summing it up

With the emergence of the Cloud; no you don’t need an umbrella, you just need to know what it can do for your business: Cloud computing is the future of business technology.

Some benefits:

1. Lower costs with Pay-as-You-go
Subscribing to a SaaS application removes the overhead associated with implementing conventional software. Traditonal software implementation would involve purchasing and maintaining servers, housing them securely, and installing and maintaining the software. The upfront investment in hardware, specialist IT skills and the software itself can be huge – whereas using a SaaS provider means paying a PAYG subscription.
– This point is particulary prevalent in these financial times, business is still going but large upfront cash investments are best avoided

2. Quicker deployment
Since a SaaS provider (or hosting company) will already have the infrastructure waiting and be able to speedly deploy new instances of the software a business could be up and running in a far shorter time that if they decided to implement it themselves.

3. Greater Security
As a SaaS provider, client data security and system security is of the highest priority. Should either of these be compromised the whole business is at risk and so it is given a serious amount of attention. For example, at SpiderGroup we have our infrastructure ‘Penetration tested’ by external agencies to ensure we’re up to stratch.

4. Better reliability
As with security, up-time or reliability is at the top of the priority list of any SaaS provider. With qualified, in house engineers montoring the systems 24hrs a day if a problem occurs it can be dealt with immediately – not when it has started to affect the software.

A couple of the software applications we provide on the SaaS model are:

Microsoft Exchange Server (£15.00 per mnth)
This is all your Outlook data – Email/Diary/Contacts which allows them to sync to your mobile and be able to share colleagues diaries.

Microsoft Windows SharePoint (£15.00 per mnth with Exchange)
This gives a business online file storage, backup and other information management tools.