2012: Year of the Cloud

When we started talking about cloud computing five years ago, it meant one thing: Services such as Amazon or Salesforce that customers could self-provision over the Internet and pay as they go. That's what we call the "public cloud" today, as opposed to the "private cloud," which refers to the application of public cloud technologies and practices to one's own data center. The public cloud was where the action was in 2012 -- and it's where much of the action is going to be in 2013. According to IDC, businesses will spend $40 billion on the public cloud this year, rising to nearly $100 billion in 2016. Despite that rapid growth, public cloud dollars still represent a small fraction of the trillions of dollars devoted to IT globally every year. The data center isn't going anywhere -- but it needs the greater efficiency and agility the private cloud offers. The question of the day is whether the private cloud will evolve quickly enough to stop an accelerated exodus to public cloud services.

Running a Small Business

Running a small business and want it to appear as big as a conglomerate? Then all you need is a great business application development company that also does web development. For the communication aspect, an VoIP service would definitely put you ahead of the competition. With an internet phone company such as RingCentral you can have an 800 toll free number, fax line, an automated receptionist, and many extensions to make your business appear much larger than it is. You could even use a vanity number to make your toll free number unforgettable. You can route calls to different extensions or employees cell phones or have them picked up by voicemail. Using the internet for phone service is smart cost efficient and improves the productivity of your business. The business applications will enable your business to have a constant web presence which will pave the way for global growth.

Different Services of Cloud

The name cloud services is often misunderstood and thought of as just a marketing term to define centralized, mainframe computing. The sheer amount of resources available makes today's cloud computing incomparable to mainframe/terminal host computing. It's nothing for cloud storage providers to quickly add another GB of storage for a customer simply at the customer's request thanks to hosted scalable and flexible cloud-computing resource. It is also a broad umbrella under which many sub-divisions fall. Cloud computing can include Software-as-a-Service where a specific application or service is offered to a customer as a subscription. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) allows businesses a platform on which they can create and deploy custom apps, databases and line-of-business services integrated into one platform. With Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), businesses can purchase infrastructure from providers as virtual resources. Components include servers, memory, firewalls and more.