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Although the term “cloud” is seeing increasing use, it’s necessary to clarify what portion of “the cloud” is of interest to a particular audience. For small and medium businesses (SMBs), there are generally two areas of relevance in the evolution of IT services to the cloud. The first is the application layer, commonly referred to as Software as a Service (SaaS). The second is the infrastructure layer, known as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). continue »

According to Gartner analysis, $150 billion in cloud-related revenues is expected by 2013. The move of company data towards “the cloud” is not slowing, and more companies are wrestling with the “is the cloud secure?” question. continue »

By Meredith Barnhill

For small companies, hosting a Web site on a local server can be a huge expense to set up and maintain. Most companies choose to host their site on a shared hosting plan instead. Recently, a small number of Web hosts have moved their shared Web hosting plans to a cloud computing infrastructure to better manage data flowing to and from the servers where these companies’ Web sites live. continue »

By Robert W. McDonald

Small business owners should always be on the lookout for anything that can reduce their operating costs and/or makes them more competitive. That’s why the “supersmalls,” companies with no more than five employees, including the owner, should take a close look at Cloud Computing. continue »

One of the latest trends in Internet services, cloud computing is a high-level concept that applies to a variety of services all based on the idea that resources such as storage space are accessed externally, on-demand. Some of the most common uses of cloud computing are software as a service (SaaS), storage on virtual servers (utility computing), Web services in the cloud (applications programming interfaces that can be used over the Internet) and platform as a service. continue »