Cloud Computing - The Next BIG Thing

We heard about “Cloud” but have you heard of “Cloud Computing”. For the non-savvy, basically it means virtual servers available over the Internet.

Cloud computing services are provided either by subscription-based or pay-per-use, in real time over the Internet.

But "How does it work for you?"

Imagine being an executive of a company, with the responsibilities to ensure all your employees have the right hardware and software for their jobs. Typical company setting would be one computer to one head count. However, software licenses may not, due to costing. Therefore, you may have to be selective in your purchase decision.

Instead of installing a suite of software on each computer, you can make use of Cloud Computing service. All you have to do, is to run a cloud computing system's interface software. This application allows employees to log into an Internet-based service which hosts all the programs a user need for his job. A simple cloud computing system's interface software is a Web browser.

Remote machines owned by the service provider would run everything from e-mail to word processing to complex data analysis programs.

Think Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Gmail; perhaps you may already have some hand-on experience with cloud computing after all. Instead of running an e-mail program on your computer, you are logging onto a Web email account “remotely”. The software and storage for your account doesn't exist on your computer - it's on the service provider's "computer cloud".

Think Now: Cloud computing may be revolutionized the technology era in next few years.