Cloud Computing: Ten Essential Services

Critics of cloud computing say that it’s largely hype. Yet as Ken Hess points out, the following solutions and products are clearly gaining steam in the marketplace.

It’s time to think about moving part, if not all, of your business to a cloud-based infrastructure. Safety, reliability, scalability, and availability all come to mind when thinking about cloud-based services. The price is right now, too, since the companies that provide these services can meet your needs at a lower cost. Private cloud, public cloud, or a mixture of the two make sense for “The Year of The Cloud.” This list of 10 cloud-based companies will help you manage your business, keep track of your employees and give your customers unbreakable service.

1. Dropbox

Dropbox is a backup and storage service that provides 2GB of space free for those who sign-up for the service. Two gigabytes is enough to store critical configuration files, documentation, and other important files. For those that wish to save everything to the cloud-based service, $9.99 per month buys 50GB of space, and $19.99 per month provides a full 100GB. Dropbox supports all operating systems and mobile devices, including the iPad. You can also selectively share your files by folder.

2. Amazon EC2

Perhaps the best known cloud-based service is Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). This service provides high-end computing power in the form of virtual machines on Amazon’s Xen-based virtualization platform. Use the service as a substitute for your entire computing infrastructure or for additional computing bandwidth. It will cost you about $1,000 per year for a standard Windows server and a little less for Linux. How does that price compare to what you pay now?

3. Google Apps

Read the rest at ServerWatch.