Personal Blog

Into The Clouds

I guess it must be my ADD kicking in… A client asked my new company IMS to quote developing a couple of commerce web sites… including hosting costs. Well since I just launched the new company I have been busy… getting the banking in place, obtaining business licenses, finding and leasing office space, staffing the company. Hosting? I had not really thought about it in terms of giving a quote since developing price grids for Pinnacle Online when I was the CEO – and that was going on four years ago!

One of the terms that was brand new back then but too new to act upon was Cloud Computing. Cloud what? Wikipedia describes it this way:

“Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. …The concept incorporates infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) as well as Web 2.0 and other recent technology trends that have the common theme of reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users.”

So to simplify, using a combination of technologies Cloud Computing allows users access to instantly scalable applications. Examples could include Salesforce.com or Google Apps. Users access the online application through a web browser.

This same technology allows business owners a way to simplify managing multiple websites, or stream media, or even online secure data storage. About the best example I know of for automated offsite computer backup online is itsoffsite (http://www.itsoffsite.com/)[no longer active]. I interviewed company President Martin Joseph not too long ago on the Web Strategies Podcast. [no longer active]

Oh yeah… the ADD thing… I better get back to posting some prices huh?

Oh yeah again… the new company website is at http://www.strategicimsweb.com/[no longer active]

Originally Published on blog.tomanthony.com and recovered via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine