Is Cloud Computing just Hosting by another Name? | Cloud Computing - InfoWorld

It’s an interesting question.  As small businesses, we will need to make sense of “cloud computing” and to try to determine what sort of impact, if any, this new concept will have on our business.  Eric Knorr’s take on the difference between cloud computing and hosting is interesting.  I think it does a fair job of trying to distinguish between the two concepts, but as with most articles I read, this is geared more towards the enterprise IT department.

Check our Eric’s article: http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/cloud-computing-just-hosting-another-name-453?source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2009-06-15 

Basically, “cloud computing” is the industry’s new description for IT resources such as e-mail, being hosted somewhere other than on a server that sits in our office.  One of the distinctions between “cloud computing” and “hosting” is that with the cloud, we don’t have any idea where our data resides.  I think a great example of a “cloud” application would be Gmail.  We can log into our mail from a Webpage but we don’t have any idea where the e-mail resides exactly.  This is because Google has low-cost servers located all over the world and they use sophisticated load-balancing technology that moves information and data around their computing grid.  This approach allows us to use e-mail as a service, but it limits our control over the data.

Hosting is similar to cloud computing in at the IT resource resides outside of our corporate computing environment.  But unlike cloud computing, we know exactly, where our data resides.  Hosted Exchange, a Microsoft product, is a great example of this concept.  With this approach, e-mail resides off site at a co-location facility.  We know where the co-location facility is and we know, where the server or in many cases virtual server is located.  The same load-balancing concept applies to hosting in most cases, but it’s on a much smaller scale.  And it’s managed by the local hosting company or IT partner as opposed to Google.  The solution is less distributed, but it affords us more control.  

Regardless of what we call it or the specific architecture we apply there’s a good chance that our next major computing infrastructure upgrade will be to the cloud.  There’s just too many good reasons not to move services such as e-mail, file servers, and database applications out of our server closet and into a data center:

1. Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity: Moving our key server infrastructure to the cloud allows us to take advantage of all of the disaster preparedness countermeasures built into an enterprise class co-location facility.  These buildings are constructed to withstand earthquakes, fires, power disruptions and other “acts of God.”  They employ both physical and technological security that meets the most stringent regulatory requirements and most of them feature backbone access to the Internet with multiple redundant connections.  The end result is that if a disaster strikes our office, our computer systems weren’t there to be destroyed.  So long as our employees can access to the Internet, they can access our computing infrastructure and get back to work.

2. Scalability: Moving our servers to an enterprise class server and storage array that uses virtual technology allows us to access only the computing power that we need.  As our business grows, we simply add more computing power.  We don’t have to worry anymore about buying new equipment or what we will do with that equipment after a particular project is done.

3. Reduce Capital Costs: The cloud gives us the ability to pay a fixed monthly fee for our server infrastructure as opposed to laying out tons of cash to purchase all the equiptment  we need for a major network upgrade.  Instead, we only pay for what we need.

The key point that I gleaned from Eric’s article is this.  In the small-business space, many offerings will be cookie-cutter. (Like Gmail)  Small businesses using this service will not have the rich feature set that comes with an implementation of Microsoft Exchange.  In my experience, a cookie-cutter approach for something like e-mail will not work for the vast majority of small businesses.  As we explore our options for hosted or cloud solutions we need to be able to customize the offerings and service levels associated with those offerings.

The good news is that we won’t have to make these decisions immediately.  Microsoft relseased Windows Server 2008 and developers will soon be releasing business software maximised for the new platform.  The best way to explore a hosted / cloud infrastructure is too include it as an option in our next major upgrade.  

Endisght is already talking to a number of clients about this option right now.  Feel free to contact us if you’d like to talk about it to.