by Ted Saul

 Cloud computing, cloud services, everything cloud, dominates the technical and business journals these days. There are articles and books from how to retool your skills to the steps to migrate your datacenter. Don’t be mistaken, cloud isn’t just for the enterprise business so I’ve put together a few basics to help you get started in speaking intelligently about cloud computing.

 First there are three basic types of clouds. The private cloud is where the computing environment, including the hardware and software, is dedicated to your business. And while the equipment is typically located on your site it may also be operated elsewhere by a third party vendor. Within the second type, a public cloud, you don’t own the equipment but rather it is shared with other customers of the service provider. You also don’t own the headache of keeping the system updated and stable. The provider will have a service catalog to help fit your business including the ability to charge on a pay per use basis for most cost effectiveness. Finally there is the hybrid model. As the name implies, it is a mix of both with the security advantage of a private cloud along with cost savings of one that is public.

 There are a couple of key reasons that the cloud strategy has been growing in leaps and bounds - most related to financial savings. Scalability allows the cloud to grow with your business providing only the hardware and software resources needed at the time. Online retail companies especially benefit from this capability during the Christmas holidays as their computing requirements expand with demand and scale back after the holiday rush. End to end security allows for easier management and auditing of who is accessing the environment. And because the clouds both reduce the amount of required equipment and are built with racks of space saving blades and storage blades, the physical foot print is smaller. This in turn reduces energy consumption while contributing to a greener environment.

 For the small business there are many public services available some of which you may already be using. For example, Microsoft Live, Amazon Cloud Drive and the suite of Google Apps are very commonly used to share data and present documents. Companies offer to back up your data online and send your encrypted data to some cloud location where it is safe and secure. Flickr and Dropbox are examples of web services to share and store photos and documents, all within someone’s cloud. Salesforce.com is in the business of offering multiple applications and solutions from financial to manufacturing all based within a cloud environment.

So when will your business be big enough to take advantage of a cloud environment? It may correspond to when you are tired of replacing equipment, installing applications and managing systems. At that time you may want to find yourself a cloud provider and let someone else be the host.

Ted Saul is a business consultant helping with specialized needs of startups and SMBs. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it "> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , Linkedin or on Twitter at TWS787.