“The Cloud.” It seems everyone’s talking about it, but what is it? In its simplest form, the cloud is a metaphor for the Internet. Cloud Computing is accessing data, programs, or services via the Internet.

Think of a company’s infrastructure: computers on people’s desks accessing shared data on a server, located in a server room. Data is backed up from that server, emails are stored on the server, many people working on the same document from that server. Now move the server to a remote location (the cloud) and access the same data over a secure connection over the Internet. That is cloud-computing.

The cloud opens up doors to unlimited scenarios and product offerings: backup your hard drive to the cloud and you will be able to show your vacation pictures from Aunt Sally’s computer in Tulsa during Thanksgiving dinner. Purchase books on Amazon and read them from anywhere by logging into your account from any computer or device with Internet access.

Many of these cloud options include a monthly or annual fee, usually based on number of users and/or amount of data.

Benefits of the Cloud:

Accessibility / Availability – you get it anytime, anywhere.

Scalability – you pay for what you use.

Compliance – offered for various businesses and for your many industry needs. For example, health care organization have access to HIPAA compliant solutions, financial companies have SOX (Sarbanes Oxley).

Security – your provider is responsible for maintaining the servers and storage in a secure location, with redundant Internet Providers, high capacity generators, and a team of security experts to safeguard your data.

Cost – server and storage hardware is “rented” from your provider instead of you having to purchase, deploy, and maintain the expensive equipment onsite at your facility.

Disadvantages:

When the Internet is down, you need to wait for your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to correct the issue – which can put your business at a standstill, unless you have a backup business continuity plan in place.

Physical access to your data – if there’s a dispute with the vendor or the vendor goes out of business, in general you no longer have access to your data.

Security – While most service providers have large teams of security experts to protect your data, ultimately you are entrusting them to do their job, with little control. Also, large providers are more likely to be targets of hacking attempts just for the large amount of data they hold. Amazon is probably more likely to see hacking attacks than Jeff’s Burgers and Hotdogs joint down the street. It does not mean Jeff should not be vigilant about network security, but the odds are highly slighted towards Amazon… unless Jeff just fired a disgruntled employee who knows a thing or two about computers.

Cost – Usually you pay a monthly per person and/or data amount fee. This can start to add up very quickly.

 Basic Examples of Cloud Computing:

DropBox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, documents, and videos anywhere and share them easily. You never have to email yourself a file again. The downloadable Dropbox desktop application runs on Windows, Mac, or Linux operating systems and gives you access to your Dropbox directly through a folder on your hard drive.

Microsoft Office 365 / Hosted Exchange is a powerful business email platform for anywhere, anytime email access. Businesses and organizations get access to the Outlook suite – email, contacts, and calendar – with real-time sync across multiple devices. Benefits include security, stability, functionality, scalability, and elasticity - in addition to a cost effective bottom line.

Google Apps is a suite of Google applications that brings together essential services to help your business. Professional email, online storage, shared calendars, video meetings and more.

One Drive (formerly SkyDrive ) is installed on all of your devices and provides access to your photos, videos, documents and more from almost anywhere.

Carbonite (online backup solution) is a very affordable solution to backup your data automatically from your computer to the cloud. It sits in the background and every time you click “Save” on that document, a copy is made to the cloud. Clients tell us, “But I already have an USB drive that I connect to and backup everything once a week.” Our response - “When was the last time you really performed the backup? And what happens if this building gets flooded, or someone breaks in and steals your laptop and USB drive?” Carbonite takes care of all of that and, once your subscription is setup, you don’t have to think about it.

Voice Over IP (VOIP) allows businesses to have fully functional phone systems, with menus, music on hold, ability to transfer calls to different extensions (even if they are not in the same physical location) all without having to purchase a Phone System. If you are “working” from home due to snow or from your beach house while on vacation, have your calls ring on your phone at the remote location and make outbound calls which display your main company number as the caller ID.

“The ‘cloud’ is a great solution for many reasons – often it’s free and offers easy access to your data,” stated Bernie Orglmeister, President & Senior Project Engineer of eBernie, Inc. “Some people might be uncomfortable about having their personal or business data out there on the cloud but, the fact is, you’re probably already doing it. If you use online banking or purchasing online or at the store (example, Target stores breach of customer data), your information is already on the cloud. It also allows for smaller businesses to operate and benefit from large scale infrastructures without having to invest and maintain servers that can cost several thousands of dollars.”