Head in the Cloud Based Solutions

I wrote this for a specific project - but for anyone curious about the basics of cloud computing, this entry might be helpful to you.

“…the ability to experiment with more ideas can set a competitive advantage for the organization and deliver products and services that more rapidly create revenue.”
Phil Garland

Cloud computing isn't going away.  It took off in 2010 and soon business and service apps will be as easy to use as most social media apps.  Simply put: internet speeds will increase, therefore computing service needs rise; so the cloud will continue to grow.

Yet many CEO's are still hesitant to make the switch over to the cloud innovation.  This gives smaller companies the opportunity to grab new resources that weren't readily available for them, before traditional large companies begin to take over.

The benefits of cloud-based solutions in business boil down to three things: 

1. Fast resources

2. Less costs and 

3. Low maintenance  

Most of us use cloud computing without even realizing it when we upload our photos to social sites and retrieve documents we saved on a service like Google Drive.

The resources are shared and permission-controlled for multiple users, adjusted per demand and time zone.  Most IT experts suggest cloud computing requires minimal management or effort on the part of the user or IT staff, which gets your content up and running faster.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology states: "Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction."

To ultimately sell the idea to a CEO, emphasize the ease of use of a service an employee can access anywhere from the web.  The cost is lower and many cloud services offer products as an alternative to software (Adobe, Microsoft, SAP, etc.) or SaaS (Software as a Service).   Disaster recovery provides reassurance and frees your IT staff to worry about other issues.  Last but not least, mobile cloud-computing is a match made in heaven for technology trends and solutions. 

The bottom line of any cloud-computing service is: faster, simpler, and less expensive; the wave of now AND of the future.