Project overview:
What is all the hype about cloud computing? Well in a nutshell really it’s nothing more than remote hosting, something many organisations have been doing for years. In recent times though remote storage has become available to the masses as the costs have tumbled and many large organisations see the ‘Software as a Service’ model really make cost effective sense. Gone are the days when a company would have to have a massive server room at its head office. The cost of all that infrastructure can be much better spent on procuring all those same services but have someone else keep it all up and running. There are very few systems and databases that cannot be hosted remotely and at a cheaper cost than having to do it all in-house.
There are however political and operational reasons why companies are wary of cloud computing and what it means for their organisations. But be assured the costs savings are such they can often far outweigh the political issues where and how data is stored. Your competition will be doing it if they can so you have to stay competitive.
Depending on the nature and sensitivity of your data there may be local regulatory requirements as to where and how your data is stored. Up in the cloud who controls where it is, do you trust, Amazon, Microsoft or any other cloud service to keep it safe and where it’s meant to be.
