Work Whenever, Wherever

Ever had one of those days when you wake up knowing that you are way too sick to be going to work?
So what do you do? You sit in bed for five minutes thinking about your options. Option one: being that you go to work sick, feel miserable, spread germs, and have the possibility of infecting others. Or option two: take the day off, only find yourself falling behind in your work and putting more pressure on your colleagues. Making a decision like this would be a lot simpler if you could just work from home.

Well with cloud based software you can do exactly that. This is because cloud computing lets companies deliver communication tools, software, applications and access to documents and databases from virtually anywhere you have an internet connection. This way you can still complete some of you work responsibilities so you don’t fall behind, and you also can focus on feeling better by staying at home and resting.

Being not able to go to work because of an illness is only one of the numerous reasons why employees miss work throughout the year. Whether it be because of an illness or because of a doctor’s appointment, employees are going to miss a day off work eventually. What I have explained here is that the organization does not need to suffer simply because one person cannot go to work. Cloud computing is allowing employees to still be productive outside of the workforce by enabling them to work at home.

References N, Tony. "Enhancing Employee Productivity by Supporting Working from Home with Cloud Computing." Enhancing Employee Productivity by Supporting Working from Home with Cloud Computing. N.p., 6 Nov. 2014. Web. 23 Feb. 2015.

"IT GRID." IT GRID. Technology Pte Limited, n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.

Competitive Advantages

In today’s world, tons of people are opening up their own businesses with the hope of seeing success and profit. In order for these businesses to become successful, they need to have customers. But what makes these customers choose one specific product or service over all the others?  Well in business words, it is because one firm has a competitive advantage over all of the others. This post is going to explain how running a business with cloud based software can be an great competitive advantage over rivals.

A real life example of an organization using cloud as a competitive advantage would be Netflix. Does anyone remember the days when you had to drive all the way to Blockbuster in order to rent a movie? Getting all the way to blockbuster and walking across the isles to rent out a movie was way too time consuming for the neutrals liking and Netflix knew this. After cloud started to expand, Netflix and Amazon Web Services (AWS) partnered up for their services and delivery of content. AWS is a cloud computing provider that allows Netflix to organize thousands of web servers and terabytes of storage within a couple of minutes. Because of this, people can now watch Netflix shows and movies at a lightning fast stream anywhere in the world on a computer, tablet, or even smartphone without having to move from their chairs. Netflix saw a flaw in Blockbusters business and turned it into a competitive advantage. Fast forward a couple of years from the blockbuster days and now blockbuster is bankrupt while Netflix is a billion dollar company.

References: http://aptris.com/news-events/itsm-insights/paas/cloud-computing-use-drives-new-competitive-advantages/

Kelly. "Amazon Want 100% Of Netflix Streaming On Their Cloud." World TV PC Streaming Video and TV. Worldtvpc, 20 Nov. 2012. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.
Butler, Brandon. "Why Netflix Is One of the Most Important Cloud Computing Companies." Network World. Network World, 24 July 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.

History of the Cloud

So far in these blog posts I have mostly talked about why your business should make the switch to cloud. What I have not talked about however is how cloud came to become as big as it is today. I talk about the history of cloud computing here because in order to see the future with something, you must first look into it's past to see how it became.
Cloud computing first started off in 1999 when the arrival of Salesforce.com came into action. This website was made for delivering an enterprise application through the internet, which made way for software firms to deliver applications over the internet. Three years later in 2002, Amazon Web Services made a group of cloud based services to help run their website. This included cloud based storage, computation, and human intelligence through the Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). AMT is a crowd sourcing Internet marketplace that lets people and firms organize the use of human intelligence to achieve jobs that computers can not do. Later in 2006 Amazon again boosted cloud computing to another level by launching its Elastic Compute cloud (EC2) as a web service that let small companies and individual people rent computers where they are able to run their own computer applications. The Amazon EC2 was said to be the first widely accessible cloud computing service that had ever been used. 

Just three years after EC2 had been created, perhaps one of the biggest milestones in cloud computing had taken place. Web 2.0 and Google started to offer browser-based business application (such as Google App store). These applications were so necessary and desirable that consumers would buy things far more expensive than they were used to just to run these applications. A real life example of this was the rise of smart phones and tablets, people bought these expensive gadgets in order to be able to run these killer applications. From then on the expansion of cloud computing was colossal. Now every day tasks that we do is all revolved around cloud, whether it is saving something to Google drive or iCloud, or booking a hotel reservation online. Many of the online tasks we do involve the cloud. 

By learning and understanding where cloud has come from, it is easy to develop an opinion on where it is going in the future. Many see that with the influence the internet has on society today, and the amount of growth cloud has experienced in such little time, the future of cloud will be monumental.

references:Steve. "New Cloudist Series – Outages in the Cloud - Part 1." New Cloudist Series – Outages in the Cloud. The Cloudist, 17 Jan. 2013. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.
, "Cloud Computing: Past, Present and Future." IPhone Repair Morris County Northern New Jersey Computer Repair. Intrepidweb, 5 Dec. 2012. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.

Mohammad, Arif. "A History of Cloud Computing." ComputerWeekly.com. Computer Weekly, n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2015.

Maintenance

In a world where technology is always growing. For your company to stay up to date you must always have the newest software. Generally speaking, software applications have a short life span before they need to get upgraded. This means that the IT department has to constantly upgrade their software whenever new updates come out. 

With cloud computing you do not have to worry about having your IT department spend all of their time upgrading new software. In fact, by switching to cloud you get the latest software updates taken care of by the cloud vender. This is because when you switch to cloud computing, you are asked to you pay a fixed monthly payment that covers many things like your security, and storage of data. One of the other things you get with this subscription is an automatic update to your software whenever there is a new upgrade available. This ensures that the user interface keeps up to date with your business demands. 

Since the IT department isn't spending all of their time updating software, they can focus on other important things such as strategic planning for their company. And in the case that you don't find this software to be useful to your business, the best part about cloud computing is all you have to do is stop your use and end your monthly contract. The simplicity and convenience of using the cloud will help your company by keeping the software up to date while giving your company extra time to plan and execute important objectives.

References: "5 Benefits of Cloud Computing | Telemeen Communication Updates." 5 Benefits of Cloud Computing. Blogger, 23 Nov. 2014. Web. 22 Feb. 2015., 

"Top 10 Business Reasons to Move to the Cloud." Top 10 Business Reasons to Move to the Cloud. Windows Server, 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.

Speed

Possibly the biggest reason why companies are switching to cloud is because of the amount of time it takes for everything to get going. With a traditional software, the time it takes to commission, instrument, and arrange the services usually takes around weeks or months to do. However, if a company uses its cloud provider to get everything started up and going, the whole process can only take a couple of hours. Think about it. Why would you wait for months for an IT department to order and get new servers when you can get one yourself within a couple of hours?

Once it comes down to it all, when your business is at the point to start expanding, you cannot have the lack of technology hold you back. When customers want your new product, it’s hard to tell them to wait. To get all the technology needed to grow, buying and setting everything up usually takes around weeks. With the cloud, the growth of your business can be reached within minutes. Using the cloud in place your company will be put at a competitive advantage to grow effectively, and to outpace the rest of your competition.

Now more than ever it is easy to see that the world is moving at a very fast pace. To keep up with this pace the cloud has made starting up a business very easy and rapid. It is one of the only areas where starting up a business can have the same resources as a common large corporation only cloud does it in very little amount of time.

References:12 Feb. 2013. Web. 22 Feb. 2015., Castell, Ethan. "How to Innovate Faster than the Fastest - Thoughts on Cloud." Thoughts on Cloud. IBM, 

"Top 10 Business Reasons to Move to the Cloud." Top 10 Business Reasons to Move to the Cloud. Windows Server, 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.

Cloud Goes Green

So far in this blog I have talked about all the great things that cloud could do to enhance your business and bring it up to the next level. What hasn't been given a whole lot of time is the fact that cloud can help reduce the corporate carbon footprint that has been brought up. One of the ways switching your business to a cloud based software helps your business become more environmentally friendly is the simple fact that you will be using less machines. In smaller type businesses and corporate environments, server utilization rates are around 5 to 10 percent. This means that to get the same amount of work done, you need more servers. With cloud, the utilization rates are around 60 to 70 percent which means these shared data centers have require less machines to have the same capacity. Since data loads vary from time to time throughout the day, the company needs to have enough servers to handle the peak times. When these machines aren't producing at capacity they are just sitting there uselessly taking up energy for no reason. This is not as big of a problem with cloud because there are less computers to reach that capacity.

Another way cloud helps improve your businesses public image as a green company is by merging climate control costs. For a server to run at its best level, the temperature and humidity levels have to be cautiously maintained. Cloud takes advantage of efficient layouts that are hard to replicate. This makes cloud servers greener and also cuts down on the costs from your company at the same time. If there aren’t a lot of servers to take care of and control the climate for, you don’t need to pay to control it. This leads to big savings on energy bills and energy itself.

Going green by switching to cloud doesn't just help make drastic changes in the preservation of our planet, it is also a great way for you to improve your companies’ public image.

References: Smith, Matt. "Cloud Computing: The Latest in Tech Also Has Hidden Environmental Benefits." Sustainablebrands.com. Sustainable Life Media, 24 June 2014. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.

Brown, Michael. "Going Green: The Eco-Friendly Aspect of Cloud Computing." Going Green: The Eco-Friendly Aspect of Cloud Computing. N.p., 18 Mar. 2014. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.

Financial savings by switching to cloud

Gone are the days where running a business meant having to spend the majority of your budget going towards information technology gadgets. In the today's world, the people who use cloud are no longer required to have strong knowledge and skill set in information technology in order to run their system. So if there is no longer a requirement to have a strong background in information technology, why spend a large amount of money towards those IT systems? Rather than buying all these expensive systems for your business, these costs can be reduced by using the resources of your cloud computing service supplier. 

Switching to cloud does not just help with reducing the costs of purchasing systems, cloud is also very helpful in reducing operating cost's. Since cloud is all run through the internet, your energy consumption expenses will drastically decrease. In fact, using cloud has been shown to reduce energy consumption by at least 30%. Along with that, if the business is running through cloud, you no longer have to worry about paying the wages of expert information technology staff.

Throughout the recent years, cloud technology has changed to be a very efficient, strategic storage for massive data. This storage can be perfectly used for growing small and mid-sized businesses because of how it helps reduce costs and increase the value of the business. One of the main promise's I see with using cloud technology is the ability for the business to be able to do more with less resources and less costs.

References "Cloud Computing for Business : Building ROI from Cloud Computing."Cloud Computing for Business : Building ROI from Cloud Computing. N.p., 2013. Web. 22 Feb. 2015. <http://www.opengroup.org/cloud/cloud/cloud_for_business/roi.htm>.
"Top 10 Business Reasons to Move to the Cloud." Top 10 Business Reasons to Move to the Cloud. Windows Server, 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.