This is my first blogpost on the Cloud4Bizz blog, so of course I was thinking what to write. As I am a ‘non-techie’ my blog posts will be more about what you can do with the technologies than zooming into the technology itself. That’s something for my Cloud4Bizz partners.

Yesterday it came to me: The Cloud. Our whole business is based on the Cloud, as our company name implies: Cloud4Bizz – Cloud for Business. If you are going to understand what we do and offer, it’s vital to know what the Cloud actually is.

But yesterday, I got kicked off my ‘cloud’ and landed with both feet firmly on the Earth again. I spoke to the director of a small company and told him about Cloud4Bizz. “Sounds good”, he said, “but what is the Cloud?”

What is the Cloud?

A very good question. Very simply put, the Cloud means that all your applications and resources are available anywhere, via the internet. They are on a server somewhere in some data-centre. Most likely you will not have any clue on which exact piece of hardware they are sitting. This contrasts with having a server at home or in the office, where you can physically see the green, orange or blue lights flicker on the server indicating to you “I am active, working for you”.

Why is it called The Cloud?

In the ’90′s when a technical person was going to explain you how telecoms or the internet worked he would draw several computers and a cloud. The computers would be linked via the cloud symbol. The cloud represented the Internet. The cloud symbol has evolved to be the metaphore for the whole Internet.

Cloud Computing and Cloud Storage

The Cloud stands for all internet related issues. The most used expressions in relation to the Cloud are:

• Cloud Computing
• Cloud Storage

Cloud Computing

Do you use Hotmail or Gmail? Google Docs? Salesforce? If so, you are already using Cloud Computing services, also known as Software as a Service (SaaS).

So what is Cloud Computing? Cloud Computing is using software and hardware via the internet without the need to possess the software and/or hardware. The software becomes like a utility, like electricity, gas, or your telephone. And straight away that’s a big advantage of Cloud Computing. You don’t have to invest time and money in managing the hardware, software and licenses to make use of the benefits. Cloud Computing can:

• save you money as you don’t have to invest upfront, and the amount of money spent is less than doing your IT in-house.
• save you time as you can start using the service immediately, without preparation and / or installation time
• save the environment as the data centres used for Cloud services are more optimized for energy saving than internal data centres. According to Pike Research in 2020 much of the work done today in those internal datacentres will be outsourced to the Cloud.

Cloud4Bizz is such a Cloud Computing service. It offers these same benefits. If you use Cloud4Bizz you can make use of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Enterprise edition and Microsoft Exchange 2010 without the need to buy the required licenses. To make use of SharePoint you will also need to buy SQL server licenses. Using Cloud4Bizz you don’t need to do that either. You just pay a monthly-fee – like your electricity or phone bill – and that’s it.

Cloud Storage

Whilst data growth is growing rapidly the demand for storing all this data will grow too. According to James Kobielus – analyst of Forrester Research – the demand for storage will double every 24-36 months the coming decade. The growth will be not so fast now, but in time with new technologies, compression techniques and adoption of Cloud Storage the growth will accelerate. So how are you going to deal with this data growth?

In our vision we feel that Cloud Storage is the best solution for organizations who foresee a growth in their content and information but cannot estimate how big this growth will be. Investing in internal storage servers will be financially risky. If you invest in too much storage you have just spent money on storage capacity you are not using. If you invest in a too small storage server you will need to do another investment costing you additional resources. By using Cloud Storage you bypass these problems. You just pay for the storage you need. If you want to scale you can add extra storage easily. As the cloud storage providers like Windows Azure and Amazon work with economies of scale, chances are that the total cost of cloud storage will be significantly lower than the total cost of ownership that you pay for storage in-house.

Cloud4Bizz acknowledges the power and the many benefits of Cloud Storage. That’s why we offer standard 2 GB cloud storage to every account. Currently, we use Microsoft Windows Azure as our Cloud Storage Provider. We chose Windows Azure for its scalability, offering the reality of ‘unlimited’ storage‘ today. To be honest, we also chose Windows Azure because it is from Microsoft. You may never have heard of Cloud4Bizz before, but for sure you have heard about Microsoft. With Microsoft behind Windows Azure we can be very confident about the continuity of our cloud storage offering.

Why should I use the Cloud?

Put simply, it saves you a lot. You can focus on what really matters to your business (your core business).

Let me outline all the benefits of you using the Cloud for your company :

• Hardly any to no up-front investment costs. Depending on the cloud computing and cloud storage service there are few to no upfront costs. Cloud4Bizz has no upfront costs
• Say goodbye to traditional IT. With Cloud Computing and Cloud Storage you are outsourcing your IT. Your IT department can focus for example on development, becoming a revenue department instead of a cost department. If IT is not your core business you now can say goodbye to your IT issues. Your main IT challenge will be maintaining internet connection and operational desktops and laptops – a much less challenging and therefore less costly operation.
• Fast and easy deployment. If you have a new collegue, this collegue can have his / her account fast. We can switch people on (and off!) just like that. You just need to worry about training people to get the best out of their tools.
• No hardware needed. The time when you had to invest time, people and money in servers is in the past.
• Easy to access anytime anywhere. You just need an internet connection. With mobile internet connection also more available you can access your content via mobile smartphones or an iPad too.
• Green IT. Cloud Data Centres make better use of technology and economics of scale resulting in:
  • reduced wasted capacity of servers. There is simply a better match between supply and demand
  • better use of servers. As the server infrastructure is shared among many there is always a server being used. Compared to servers in-house where servers often are doing nothing but are using energy.
  • better data center efficiency. It’s simple. These big data centers have the resources to adapt the latest energy saving technologies.

What are the drawbacks?

There are some issues you should be aware of when you adopt the Cloud for your business:

• No internet connection. The big advantage is also it’s biggest disadvantage. If you lose internet connection then – depending on the service – you have partial or no access to your content. But remember: loss of connection is not the same as loss of your content. Switching to another location or internet provider with internet access will restore your ability to work with your information again. Choosing the Cloud will mean investing in a reliable internet connection. As part of its service, Cloud4Bizz provides the ability to work offline via Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Workspaces.
• Backups. Make sure that the Cloud Computing service has a backup service in place. Cloud4Bizz has all your content encrypted and stored twice in separate geographically different datacentres, meaning that backup is done automatically. There is no need for additional back up measures.
• Compliance Regulations. Make sure that the Cloud service provider is compliant with the necessary regulations
• Service Levels. How reliable is the uptime of the service of the Cloud service provider. Cloud4Bizz works with reputable datacentres for its services. Windows Azure gives a 99,9% uptime guarantee.
• Security. Last but not least how secure is your Cloud service provider? Cloud4Bizz understands the importance of security and actually built its whole service around security (that’s why we named Cloud4Bizz a Secure Online Office). Every piece of content uploaded in the Cloud4Bizz platform will be encrypted with 256 bits AES Encryption prior to being stored in the Cloud Storage. Even if someone breaches the security of Windows Azure (which is unlikely in itself) the Cloud4Bizz data will be useless to them, as it’s further encrypted.

I hope this blogpost gave you some insight what the Cloud is and why you should want to use it for your business. If you would like to add information or views on this Cloud topic, feel free to leave a comment.