Over the years the Internet has brought us many new capabilities to collaborate from business to consumer, business to business and consumer to consumer. I always wonder where the Internet and technology will take us next, perhaps to another galaxy !

On a serious note, the potential of cloud imputing is endless. Companies have built their own data centers for many years, purchased server after server to ensure they have all the processing capabilities required to run their businesses. Unfortunately, the investment on servers, networking equipment, software, security, applications, server replacement cycles etc all come at a huge operating cost. Personally, I believe that SMBs will still keep their core infrastructure within their own data centre, and review what the cloud offers with caution at the very beginning. It’s a bit like buying BMW’s during your whole life for your week day vehicle and then deciding to sell it and buy a Mercedes, or having a Ferrari as your weekend car and then selling it to buy a Porsche. Some people love one or the other, but not both 🙂 Well thats me personally anyway (they are all fantastic car manufacturers though).

There are always applications which make more sense to be on the local network rather then hosted elsewhere. Even though the offerings in the cloud could replace a complete data centre, there are many bridges to cross before taking a huge leap of faith to move to an architecture which is essentially not controlled by the business. And as for us IT folks, well if we have a server, we control the application, updates, releases etc its all under our control and its our sweet spot !

I will be writing articles about cloud computing which cover architecture, security considerations and business processes which require consideration for moving to the cloud. There will also be topics based on specific issues and links to the most current articles from various security and cloud computing conferences to ensure you are kept up to date on recent content.

Watch this space !