Tips In Choosing Disaster Recovery Solutions

Remember the story of the legendary passenger ship the Titanic? It was said to be unsinkable and yet on its first voyage in April of 1912, it sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic after an encounter with an iceberg. It may be over a hundred years later, but “infallible” products still cease to exist. This holds especially true with computers – the overall complexity of one of today’s simple laptop computers is arguably as complex as the human body. Unless proper care is maintained of computer systems, a failure can cripple an organization. This is why it is extremely important to ensure that appropriate measures are taken with systems that manage crucial business data.

A wide variety of back-up solutions are available for every size business in any industry. The most important first step to take is to formulate a plan. Even small businesses should have a solid plan for retaining and recovery data. It can start with a few simple questions:

• How much data has my organization collected up until this point in time?
• How much is it the data worth and what funds can be allocated to preventive maintenance?
• What is my current system for storing and backing-up data?

Starting with small businesses, there are a broader range of options that can effectively serve data back-up needs. Some of the most ideal solutions today can be found with NAS – simply backing data up to an external storage system that is easily accessible is a good solution for some. Simple NAS devices parallel methods some larger industries use to retain and back-up information. However, NAS and simple USB external drives can all still fail. If this is the solution chosen, it’s important to maintain a regular back-up schedule, preferably some automated system, and also to check the health of the device as part of routine maintenance. Perhaps the best solution is to use an online back-up service such as Carbonite, SugarSync or Dropbox. These are great solutions that can scale from a small amount of storage offered for free up to many terabytes.

Businesses that have multiple locations as well as those that fall into the midsized business category may be able to use certain online services to retain data but there are hardware solutions that may better serve the company’s needs. If there is already an existing IT infrastructure it could potentially hold files for legacy software which still have value for a business. Preconfigured data storage systems like NorStor NS2000 from Nordisk are designed to integrate with an existing system in order to handle data storage for all types of files.

Large businesses that are not operating from a public cloud have many different solutions like redundant RAID arrays that automate data mirroring and hard drive rebuilding. This is probably the most effective way to ensure business continuity and protect against data loss. Of course, certain disasters can wipe out an entire machine, so extra caution should be taken, perhaps in further backing data to a remote location. Remember to keep an eye out for icebergs – it never hurts to have extra resources for back-up and recovery if it fits the budget.

By Deney Dentel,

Deney Dentel is the CEO at Nordisk Systems, Inc. Nordisk Systems is the only local IBM Premier Business Partner based in the Pacific Northwest, specialized in all IT solutions  including cloud computing services, disaster recovery, servers manged service, storage and virtualization.

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CloudVelocity: Quickly Migrate Server Farms To The Cloud

The devtest environment is often varied and each development team would have their own separate environment that they build and maintain by themselves. This tends to foster fragmentation especially with slight variations in the operating system and other essential modules. The only solution is to create a single devtest environment and the best place for this, especially for geographically separated teams which is a commonality among today’s development world, is the public cloud. Think devtest cloud.

The above problem is compounded when moving to the public cloud as deploying multi-tier apps requires extensive manual configuration and provisioning of libraries, application data and binaries, operating systems, services, and even servers adding to complexity and contributing to downtime. This is the main reason why a lot of executives tend to ignore the cloud devtest environment solution.

CloudVelocity is here to change all of that. It automates all these time-laden and risky critical processes which are required during migration from traditional data centers into the public cloud or even on a hybrid cloud. And like any automating service, it is easy as one-two-three:

1. Download the CloudVelocity software into the servers.
2. The software then automatically creates a blueprint of the servers and starts replicating the OS, libraries, binaries, app stacks, and all application data into the cloud servers. This is the actual cloud migration being done automatically.
3. After the replication process, you are ready to provision and launch your multi-tier application in the cloud along with your devtest environment.

That sounds so easy that it actually looks like a single step, and that’s just the Developer Edition, the Enterprise Edition is capable of so much more, think robust Cloud Migration, Cloning and Cloud Failover and even create Concurrent Clones of your environments at the press of a button. You can start harnessing the on-demand power of the public cloud without prior knowledge of the underlying technicalities, allowing you to concentrate more on development and testing.

Both versions of CloudVelocity allow you to migrate multiple physical or virtual server farms to the AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud in mere minutes. And if you sign up for a Free Beta devtest Trial Before February 15, CloudVelocity will pay for AWS charges during the trial period.

By Abdul Salam

Sponsored Post By Cloud Velocity

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What Happens When Cloud Computing Embraces Evolving Antivirus Brands As Security Models?

Three areas of cloud computing are the crisis points of security breaches. Were it not for Software as a Service (SaaS) programs, there would be no malware. Similarly, but for the openings in the server connections in a network or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), cases of mistrust between proxies would never be an issue. Lastly, were it not for the break in the wall of Platform as a Service (PaaS) as the development platform where hackers can find a field day, there wouldn’t be any security concerns for the cloud community.

Still, the evolving nature of traditional antivirus giants may one day become the saving grace against hardware and cyber crimes that center on mistrust. Though antivirus is like a physical injection, it still qualifies as an all-embracing technology that has legal implications. For example, McAfee, one of the biggest antivirus providers has migrated into the cloud with the aim to certify server networks and a collection of IP sites in a certain domain with particular security details. If the cloud computing providers breach these enforcements, they stand to lose their support by the antivirus companies while their clients may learn that their data stays unguarded.

There are many things that can happen when companies that were purely anti-malware evangelists a few years ago join in the frontline of cloud security. The advent of external monitoring, where the antivirus tool has mandate not on a single PC, but thousands, will keep the security certificates in par with a certain standard. Indeed, it is like bringing the IT department into the cloud—here, any breach will not find a ready culprit in the person of a technician, but in a remote tool that has failed to diagnose a security issue. Perhaps a possible oversight is what has prompted antivirus giants to request network kingpins and server hosts to divulge on ISP certificates and other details of safety installations to help perpetuate collective intelligence.

Talking about intelligence related to the rest of the networks in the cloud, the future technology against malware will be minimalist. It will not occupy intimidating space on the CPU like it does now. In fact, issues of setting up a program will no longer be attended by third-party assertions that the installation can only happen when an accessory virus technology is also a part of the download. In other words, the good side of this evolving technology is that it will lighten up hard disk space when working on the desktop, surfing the Internet, or tapping SaaS data because the facilitation will be ingrained in the cloud.

Finally, network intelligence will also help alleviate cloud security emergencies because the antivirus tools will be able to detect instantly the presence of a bug through analytical and networking means. It will quickly use existing resources to trace the source. Who knows, it might even penalize the infrastructure service from which the malware emerges. Right now, it is difficult to trace the path of a bug along the access-intermediary-core layers other than knowing that it comes from a certain link to a customer’s PC. Collective intelligence will help open up new horizons in the cloud that can map the career of a virus.

In short, debugging in the cloud may not be just that of customers relying on the service providers to safeguard their data. Rather, an evolving antivirus might help shield end users from frequent hardware attacks from unknown sources. It will use remote monitoring and will certify major networks that serve data users in their security mandates.

By John Omwamba

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The Cloud: Focusing On Cloud Performance – Part 1

The cloud has established its presence with applications for individuals, groups, and small and medium businesses. As a result, independent software vendors who have peddled packaged applications to cater to business functions in different verticals for companies of size might be pondering over when it is right to transfer some key offerings to the cloud and transform themselves into cloud service vendors. Unlike small players who can leverage cloud platforms like Amazon or Google Apps, they may need to create their own or shared platforms to provide their services. This is because the workloads they will have to cater may not be amenable in the existing platforms for many reasons, magnitude being the foremost.

While in the cloud a lot of caution and thought is put into addressing issues related to security, standardization, and regulation, performance is an area where excitement seems to prevail. After all, features like availability, elasticity, auto-scaling, proactive scaling, and parallelization are supposed to solve performance problems and enhance capabilities. While this could be true for the end-user and client perspectives, these are performance requirements that have to be delivered and met from a vendor perspective. Catering to the business workloads of several sizable companies is in itself a huge performance feat for a potential cloud service provider. Add the above features and we are looking at a very impressive challenge to deliver in terms of performance. This message should not be lost on the community before attempting to take the cloud to the next level—delivering industrial functionality.

Traditionally, performance has been a nice-to-have feature. With packaged software meant to be deployed for individual companies, sloppy performance has often been an annoyance but rarely a showstopper. Moreover, issues related to performance have been localized to individual companies and their customers. Scouring through ‘Schadenfreude’ (as one author describes the websites by utilizing a German-based word that hints at pleasure felt at another person’s misfortune) containing websites that list software disasters will reveal only a few attributable to performance issues but which have had serious impacts.

In the cloud performance is critical. Performance issues could bring down industrial sectors and regions and could impact economies. In the cloud, not performing is not working. At the least, poor performance can eat into a CSV’s bottom line. There are two aspects where understanding size quantitatively matters immensely. One is the load that must be handled at the data center where the application providing the service is hosted. The other is network traffic that reaches into and out of the data center. This macro-level understanding is a must before building platforms or making service offerings for delivering industrial functionality through the cloud. Cutting corners to achieve deadlines or go to market first strategies or compulsions not to be left behind could hamper putting enough attention or caution here—that could be disastrous…

Part 2 – Next Week

By Suri Chitti

Suri Chitti (suri_chitti@hotmail.com) is a software and technology management professional. He has packed many years of experience and insight having worked in different industrial domains, for different stakeholders like companies, vendors and consultancies and has contributed to different aspects of software production like functional analysis, testing, design and management. 

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Why Cloud Computing Projects May Fail

Cloud Computing offers a large number of benefits which make an enterprise switch over to the cloud. From startups to medium and large enterprises all are keen to adopt it mainly due to the cost saving in cloud computing. However it is very important to realize that like any other new technologies there are some risks of failure. Some of the likely reasons for the failure of cloud computing projects are mentioned below.

1. Lack of managing and monitoring applications

It is a common belief that developers can start coding immediately after switching to the cloud. They no longer need to worry about the development environment. This is true to some extent but they still need to manage and monitor their application to avert failure. Lack of monitoring and managing of the application may lead to high cost of operation and eventually project failure.

2. Lack of people with skills-set

Any cloud computing projects entail people with the right skills-set to complete it successfully. Since cloud computing is a relatively new technology the availability of people with the right skills-set and experience are very rare. This could lead to project failure if not addressed early.

3. Lack of scrutinizing vendors

Cloud computing suffers from lack of standardization of Service Level Agreement or SLAs. Service providers must address certain aspects like where the data resides, failover remedies, backup, disaster recovery etc. in full details. Failure to understand the importance of these issues in SLAs may expose the project to a high risk of failure.

4. Failure to understand requirements, technology and legacy data

Like any traditional project, failure to understand the requirements upfront can eventually lead to project failure. The wrong requirements may produce wrong architecture design, database schema and technology. This eventually leads to an application that is not what the client wants. Failure to understand the legacy systems can also increase the risk of failure.

5. Early Adoption

Businesses are adopting it as a reaction to the hype surrounding cloud computing. The decision is often based on a particular technology or model. This will increase the chance of failure. Businesses should consider all models and technologies before switching to the cloud.

6. Lack of the holistic approach

It is very important for the businesses to ensure that the application they are developing in the cloud are in line with the overall IT strategy and enterprise architecture. Failure to ensure this can produce another application or system that does not work well with other existing systems.

By John Roseblum

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A Hitchhikers Guide To The Cloud – Database Challenges To Consider

The cloud has turned traditional data management on its head. People still think they will be able to command endless resources while being able to deploy, run and consume a distributed data solution anywhere, anytime. But there are key database challenges when putting your applications in the cloud that are unique and can’t be ignored.

1. High Availability

In the cloud, high availability isn’t just about hardware resiliency anymore. Because customers are removed from the actual hardware, you can no longer plug in an extra power supply, network card or swap hard drives if anything goes wrong or if you need additional resources. The cloud is not predictable and needs to be closely monitored and managed. Besides the large-scale cloud outages we all know about (such as the Amazon-EC2 US-East meltdown recently), we have to face the facts: server crashes, hardware malfunctions and other slipups are all part of the territory in the cloud. With that in mind – cloud users need to be prepared. There are hardly any SLAs for databases in the cloud. To prepare and run effectively on the dynamic cloud environment, every database, regardless of its size, must run in a replicable set-up, which is typically more complex and expensive. Maintaining high availability depends on the availability of “more of the same” resources and the ability to dynamically provision them on the fly once a failure is identified.

Often, when speaking about high availability of the database, the most obvious component is the availability of the data itself, via replication. Yet, if we remember that high availability means that the application continues to communicate with the database as usual, then the plot thickens.

Any solution to ensure availability of the data storage layer must address the availability of the front-end layer of accessing the data so that the connection between the application and any operational DB replicas is not compromised.

On the data storage level, you’ll need to replicate the data, ensure data consistency and synchronization across replicas. Then you’ll need to set up an auto-failover mechanism to monitor the cloud for any failures, identify when a replica is unresponsive and continue service from the remaining surviving replicas.

This then creates the issue of how to manage high-availability of the DB connection. Procedures to ensure high availability, as well as numerous scaling considerations – in particular scale-out – result in several copies of the database that can all be accessed via different addresses. If a replica crashes, you need to monitor which hostname is no longer available and then stop directing traffic from the application to this database.

How do you manage high availability of your database connection string, in a dynamic environment prone to failures in addition to being prone to scaling-out to additional servers (and additional connection addresses) to accommodate bursts in demand?

One way to ensure high availability of the database connection would be to provide users with the multiple front-end addresses and ports and let them handle it on the application level. Users will have to manage connection failovers, load balancing, etc. Needless to say, this will be a major headache as the developer would need to manage the DB connections 24/7 by connecting the app with an available database front-end (very similar to phone operators in the early days).

Another way is to embed high availability into a driver. The driver will be supplied with the initial front-end details and would be updated automatically with any additional front-ends. The driver will balance the connections between front-ends, handle failover automatically, and move connections seamlessly in scale-in and scale-out cases without closing the connection on the user side.

The third alternative is a balancer component on servers, which is installed with each database instance. This component takes care of balancing and availability between all the front-end nodes and seamlessly moves connections when scaling in or out.

2. Management

Database management systems are not only complex systems, but they are also key components in the operation of most software stacks. Given its criticality and complexity, operating a database can be a daunting task that requires significant expertise and considerable resources that are not always readily available to everyone.

Maintaining high availability requires continuously monitoring the cloud environment for any failures, configuring auto-failover mechanisms and keeping multiple copies of the database tier always synchronized and ready to spring into action. Ensuring elasticity means you need to monitor and re-configure and deploy your servers (and sometimes change your app) to add additional resources or to remove them if they go underutilized.

Developers flock to the cloud, and with good reason. The flip side is that once the application gains momentum, it requires a skill set not readily available for most developers. To allow developers to focus on their code rather than on the IT, the cloud ecosystem provides a myriad of off-the-shelf development platforms and cloud services to integrate with to streamline development and time-to-production.

3. Scalability

Scalability and elasticity are the trendiest words in the database arena these days – everybody scales, and everybody claims that only they scale the right way.

Scaling an application (by adding additional servers and load balancers) is pretty much a no-brainer, and many cloud providers offer that. Some, like Amazon EC2, even offer the automatic addition of servers to scale an application once CPU usage is high.

While scaling an application is pretty straightforward, scaling the database tier is more difficult, particularly when scaling out by adding nodes. Scaling a database in general is no trivial task because of its “statefull” nature (unlike the cloud’s stateless environment), and in the cloud, it is even more difficult.

Cloud applications are often characterized with fluctuating demand (spiking at any moment). Databases need to be able to instantly and automatically scale both in throughput and size to accommodate increasing demand from the application.

When evaluating a database solution, ask yourself how it scales and see if it scales in a way that would be optimal for the needs of your application.

4. Elasticity

The cloud is all about flexibility in resources – allowing you to add/remove resources to match your needs, with no need for over-provisioning or over-paying to prepare for any future peaks. Elasticity isn’t just about increasing resources when you need to by scaling up or out, but also shrinking those back down when your database is underutilized, to save on costs. Elasticity needs to be supported to accommodate very granular increases in resources so that to gain +0.X more power doesn’t mean you need to commit any pay for a much larger (+XXX) machine.

Understanding these key challenges can help to successfully deploy, run and consume a database in the cloud. Developers who are aware of the dynamic nature of clouds will take extra care protecting their assets and will be able maintain a successful application that is usable, satisfies users and produces revenue.

By Razi Sharir,

Razi Sharir, CEO of Xeround, has more than 20 years of management experience in product/solution development. Prior to Xeround, Razi has led the strategic transition from traditional data centers to cloud computing at BMC Software and the Incubator/Innovation Lab business unit.

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Cloud Computing And Tools Needed To Accelerate The Business

There has been lots and lots of news about cloud computing lately. Some people think it is a really big deal, while others have been warning us that it’s just a bunch of hype. We definitely take the first position. Cloud computing is a major step forward for computing, and it’s going to help make any further steps much easier and less expensive.

Upgrades are generally an afterthought with cloud computing. It turns the whole process into something completely different, where you don’t need to worry about purchasing the new software and your server is used in much more intelligent and efficient ways. Cloud computing also allows for much higher connectivity with other businesses.

If you hear anybody with any knowledge or credibility downplaying the cloud’s impending role, you ought to question their motives for sure. The efficiency and speed granted to cloud users will definitely be taking its toll on traditional tech arbitrage. There will be little room for middlemen, as upgrades are directly, sometimes spontaneously applied to users’ computing. This will effectively eliminate several sources of revenue which numerous stodgy execs have grown to rely upon in the last few years.

Don’t be fooled by any bellyachers. The path has been cleared for the cloud, and your business will definitely pick up the pace because of it. Just make sure that you actually know something about cloud technology before you jump on board with it. Yes, it will require a few tweaks to your existing infrastructure, but these tweaks will be minor and seamless. Yes, you will probably need to bone up on your computing knowledge, but so will everybody else. You don’t want your IT guys taking the company over, do you?

Of course you want to keep your business on the cutting edge, and cloud services will allow you to do exactly this. Any kind of enterprise or firm will benefit heavily from such a move. More importantly, businesses that choose not to get up on the cloud will quickly see themselves falling far behind their competition. It’s just the way that things are going now. Those who stand against it, no matter how noble their intentions are, will not succeed by any means.

So, your best move is to stay current with the times. This means getting on board with cloud computing. But don’t just jump in with any old provider… do your research and find a reputable computing services company who can tell you exactly what the cloud will do for you. There are dozens of choices out there right now. Location is less and less of a problem as time goes by, because technology has been allowing an increasing amount of remote connectivity to factor into the equation. Make sure your IT people have a say in the whole process as well. They’ve been running your systems, probably for years, and will offer some of the best insights as to what will work and what won’t. Finally, good luck.

By Deney Dentel

Deney serves as CEO for Nordisk Systems, Inc. Nordisk Systems specializes in IBM and open storage products for data centers of all sizes. Nordisk has expertise in VMware, KVM, Xen, Hyper-V and especially PowerVM

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Cloud Security: Fears And Challenges

Recent studies have shown that more than 60% of IT managers admit to security as the main stumbling block to their integration of cloud computing, with data protection and a perceived lack of regulation being their chief concerns. In another global study by IBM that involved more than 500 IT managers, it showed that 77% of businesses fear that cloud computing will necessitate privacy trade-offs, and 50% feared data breaches. Another 23% fear that cloud computing threatens corporate security. But really, the challenges facing cloud computing can be categorized into three; data protection, user authentication and data breach and damage.  Let’s study each in detail.

User Authentication

This is all about access and who accesses the data whether in transit or storage. Since cloud computing is usually done beyond the clients’ firewall, there’s always that fear of putting data ‘out there’. Traditionally, businesses store their data on physical servers in their premises and the hardware would need an on-site access to compromise or breach the data and this has been seen as a deterrent to hacking and illegal access. User authentication is still one of the main fears despite the fact that cloud providers ensure data encryption besides employing necessary safeguards to monitor access.

Data Protection

No company would ever want to expose themselves to any risk concerning their data (in transit or in storage) because the ramifications of this are too great to even imagine. Data that are often closely guarded include both internal and external data that touch on the company and client information respectively. If a company’s security process is called into question, clients will lose confidence in their services and this will affect the overall turn-over, even put the entire company out of business.

Data Breach, Damage and Loss

There’s a perceived threat to data in cloud because of varied reasons and one of them is fears of data loss, breach or damage. This is one security jitter however that has been counter-checked with cloud data back-ups and multiple server storage. In fact, data in cloud is less prone to breaches and physical damages like fire, floods, etc that are usually a risk in physical servers

Failure to comprehend the whole idea of cloud computing is also proving to be a challenge especially among businesses seeking to use the service for the first time. This is precisely why businesses and organizations are being encouraged to allay perceived security fears and try to exploit the positives of cloud computing.

But even as the fears are sustained across the business setting, professional cloud computing providers are investing colossal amounts of their budgets to implement high security solutions in efforts to lock clients’ resources in high security data centers accessible only to authorized entities.

By John Omwamba

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5 Cloud Performance Monitoring Tools

Cloud Monitoring

Because of the prevalence of cloud computing applications and the move from networked application services to the cloud, there is now a need for new monitoring tools and services since network monitoring tools will no longer suffice. Cloud monitoring can simply refer to the monitoring of the physical as well as the virtual servers, the data and resources they share, the applications that they are servicing, as well as their overall performance. Cloud monitoring tools can aggregate data and provide visual patterns that may otherwise be hard to identify and be completely missed without such tools. Cloud monitoring is the best way for an organization to administer its cloud resources and keep its cloud environments operating at maximum efficiency.

Tools of the Trade

Here are five cloud monitoring tools without a specific order or classification:

1. Zenoss Cloud Monitoring: This tool made by Zenoss monitors public, private, or hybrid cloud environments with a unified visibility and provides real-time awareness of the entire infrastructure. Zenoss ensures relevance through a model-driven cloud operations management system which maintains a comprehensive model of every device’s hardware, software and network relations which then makes use of that model to ensure that the right monitoring service and policies are implemented on that device.

2. RevealCloud: is a server health and performance monitoring tool provided by CopperEgg. It provides broad visibility across both private and public cloud environments that organizations may have. It uses cross-correlation analytics which help operation teams to quickly find and isolate root causes of problems and issues in the cloud, it is designed to be used in the server side. RevealCloud provides the following functions:

a. Analytics, visibility and alarms which notify administrators visually when problems are detected.
b. It provides real-time measurements, monitoring server performance every 5 seconds.
c. It also provides OS, System, and process monitoring

3. RevealUptime: is another solution from CopperEgg which is best paired with RevealCloud to provide correlated data between end user experience measurements provided by ReevalUptime and server health status data from RevealCloud. This allows administrators to better understand what their users are experiencing as well as the reason for that experience in relation to the cloud and servers.

4. Gomez APM: Compuware’s Gomez Application Performance Management (APM) provides a holistic approach to cloud monitoring of application performance along the whole delivery chain. The tool provides detailed information on the root cause of problems and how much impact it has on the entire system and business. This allows IT teams to home in on the problems fast and prioritize the critical ones. The main feature of this APM is its fault domain isolation which determines the area at fault whether it is the ISP or the internet connection itself, a third party provider, the data center, or even the user-end browser or device.

5. Rackspace Cloud Monitoring: Unfortunately, this is only for those people or organizations that use Rackspace. It is an API driven monitoring system which allows administrators to use or create APIs depending on their needs which can send notifications to any device including mobile devices. This allows administrators to be on top of their Rackspace-hosted infrastructure which includes websites, protocols, and ports.

Conclusion

Because of multiple vendors that offer different cloud services, there are bound to be some incompatibilities that arise between them. So it would be important to choose a monitoring tool that works best for you and the cloud infrastructure and provider that you are using. Though the companies that provide those monitoring tools do not say which vendors they are most or least compatible with, they offer free trials for customers which allow you to judge if the tool is right for your infrastructure and needs.

By Abdul Salam

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Peeking Into The Cloud: Look What I found!

Let’s imagine for a moment that you want to become the next super-power social site. It’s a daunting task, but you get to where you want to be by doing what? Cloud computing would help you. Cloud computing is a network of computers that are set up so that you can share data, explore new applications, and boldly go where no one has gone before. Okay, so that last part is not strictly true. No. What you can do is to have a cloud computing network setup were one part of the network handles inbound streams of information, whereas another part of that same service would be for all your outbound information.

To be any good at social media, you’re going to need to be able to store pictures, and your cloud network can do that as well. You’re not done yet – you know you’re going to need games for your visitors to play, so yet another part of the cloud service does that as well. All these things happen in milliseconds – before you even know it is happenning, it is already done. That is the power of a good cloud computing network.

Now, back to reality. The odds are that you’re not going to be the next social media giant, but let’s say you run a company. The same ideas apply to you as well. Your private cloud network can run all your applications, handle all your data and be able to store all the information you need. Your IT department is going to be wondering what to do once you put your own cloud computing system in place. Oh, and if cost is a factor for you, think about these things: How much do you spend now on making sure every computer, every system and every employee has the most up-to-date information, the best possible software to do their job, and the best equipment to get it all done? How much do you pay your IT department to do all of that?

You’re not going to be able to fire your IT department, but they will be able to focus on other projects instead of always worrying if everything is up to date. The man hours and money saved will, in many cases, make up for whatever you might end up spending on a cloud network. And remember; cloud networking is like anything else – it can be custom-made to meet your needs so that you only pay for what you use, not for more than you need.

So, is cloud computing for you? The doors are wide open, from becoming the next media giant to running a giant media company, cloud computing can be customized to meet your needs, every day. It gets better; many providers offer you a chance to test drive their services to make sure they offer what you need. Get in there and take a look – the power, speed, money and time saved and will quickly sway you.

By Emma Joseph

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