Archives January 2017

If you are planning to invest and introduce a new Recruitment Process Automation system, it is not uncommon for you to get hassled about comparing features, advantages, quality, benefits, and prices. Immaterial of selection, your new software will play a major role in the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and your Return on Investment (ROI).

How would you decide on the best recruitment software solution for your organization? In this article we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of two renowned software deployment methods, which will assist you in taking the right decision on this critical subject.

Self-hosting Software Deployment:

Self-hosting deployment is also known as Enterprise software deployment. This method is the most traditional method of using a recruitment or staffing software within an organization. What does Enterprise deployment mean?

• You purchase the software as a licensed product
• Purchase and own all of the hardware
• Servers
• Power systems
• Back up systems
• Communications
• All other infrastructure, at your location

All maintenance of the hardware, software and infrastructure is totally your responsibility including the hiring of IT staff. You will also need to pay for software maintenance, support and services to your vendor. This amounts to about 20% of the software license cost, per year.
The advantages of the ownership of the software license lets you have complete control over your data and its management. Most importantly, the system is fully secure and you can be sure that they system will not be accessed by outsiders. The only disadvantage with Enterprise software deployment is the high costs, and the TCO for this application is higher than any other application.

Software as a Service (SaaS) Software Deployment:

Also called – as mentioned in the title, Remote Hosted or more commonly known as On-Demand software. This is a subscription based model; you need to subscribe to the recruiting software, which is on servers owned and operated by your vendor at their location, and not at yours. You use the software over an Internet connection using a Web Browser or Smart Client, and your vendor is responsible for all ongoing hardware and software maintenance.

The advantages are it has a low cost of entry and a lower total cost of ownership (TCO). There is also a vested vendor interest – in case of mismanagement in the application, the vendor will loose a client.

Our choice for a suitable software solution is eConn Resume Parser which is a Self-hosting or Enterprise Software deployment. It provides you with the facility to process online resumes by extracting the required data in an organized and logical manner. The added advantages are that it helps you get support on:

• Enterprise portals
• E-learning solutions
• Enterprise application integration tools
• SOA software
• Document management systems
• Project management software

The advantages with Resume Parser as a self-hosted software solution are far more useful and safer than all other software solutions, SaaS software deployments.

Although SaaS software solutions are growing to be very popular, its disadvantages are equally high as well. Some organizations find it difficult to delegate control or trust third parties to manage their applications and data. Records and reports show that many hackers have had access to important databases using SaaS software solutions.

Source by hr software

If you plan to deploy Microsoft Dynamics GP, formerly known as Great Plains Dynamics and eEnterprise as back office accounting and sales order processing system, you should make your homework in understanding your Great Plains ecommerce integration tools and options.  We are favoring so-called “Solutions” approach, where we offer ecommerce codes and scripts, plus our service in tuning these solutions to fit your unique business processes.  This approach is especially good, when you are not starting from the ground, when you already have ecommerce website in production, which is in time very loosely integrated with your Accounting system (typically email is sent to the GP AR clerk, or even paper printed Sales Order).  Let us give you several ecommerce scenarios:

1. SOP Order Connector.  This product is the set of SQL Stored Procedures, allowing you to feed Sales Order or Invoices to Great Plains Sales Order Processing tables.  This product doesn’t use eConnect encrypted stored procedures and you can get instant real time or large volume batch mode integration in a few seconds.  Order Connector works with Dynamics GP 10.0, 9.0, 8.0, 7.5 and earlier Great Plains Dynamics versions, assuming that you are on Microsoft SQL Server DB platform

2. Posting Server.  This product allows you to break through eConnect restrictions and post SOP, POP and batches of virtually all the natures in Dynamics GP directly from your ecommerce application (written in C#, VB.Net or any other programming language, allowing you to call SQL Stored Procedures)

3. eConnect scripts.  We also offer packages of eConnect samples to automate ecommerce to SOP and ecommerce to Receivables Management integrations.  We recommend you to take eConnect programming route if your Great Plains version is recent: 10.0 or 9.0.  If you are on legacy version of Dynamics GP Great Plains: 8.0, 7.5, 7.0, 6.0, 5.5, 5.0 or earlier, please review stored procedures or Order Connector route

4. Sales Order Transfer to Invoice.  It is common practice, when you are first creating Sales Order (especially when you are working in B2B model with some negotiation) and then from ecommerce web page your customer decides to turn Sales Order to Sales Invoice.  This functionality is realized in Alba Spectrum Posting Server, please read about it in Paragraph #2

5. Dynamics GP Integration Manager in eCommerce scenarios.  IM is intuitive and end user friendly tool, however you could raise integration complexity with VBA scripts: Before Document Commit is one of the most popular.  We offer help in guru level IM Sources, especially Advanced ODBC.  IM Integration could be called on demand by Great Plains user (preferred) or scheduled for execution by Windows macro (or third party Windows macro surrogates)

6. Direct SQL Insert or Inhouse Custom Stored Procedures.  We also respect this route, taken by your IT department, in this case we offer short orientation training on Great Plains Tables Structure and data flow

7. Please, feel free to call us: 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com

Source by Andrew Karasev

To many, the cloud server is the “next big thing” in networking.The concept is simple, and now that there are hosting companies dedicated to cloud server hosting, the possibilities for the use of cloud servers for business and individuals alike, begins to really shine through.These technologies are truly innovative, as they give you the ability to “virtualize” a lot of the things you now do using only the resources of your computer, or you limited network. An incredibly attractive feature, making this the perfect networking and server solution for many, is the ability to add more resources to your cloud servers if the resources you currently have don’t cut it.

You can save money, overall, on the costs of your networking solutions through the subscription to a cloud hosting server. With the ability to handle advanced functionality and maintenance activities remotely, as well as the need for fewer hardware inputs, these services are often less expensive than competing alternatives on the marketplace. There are tons of different options for cloud servers in the UK, which gives you the freedom to find the solution that works best for you – even if you only own one computer!

Many businesses, for a long time, feared about the safety and security of cloud servers, but technology has advanced to a point where a cloud server host can truly offer you the same, or higher, level of security as any other type of server option. There are many benefit to cloud server technology such as the ability to handle, even automate, many of the applications and programs you must run on a daily basis, in a virtual environment, saving you valuable time. Taking the market by storm, cloud server technology is proving that the claims made by early proponents have come to light – now resulting in a safe and secure cloud that has an almost endless amount of resources at its disposal.

Without the need for tons of different hardware solutions, but the same, if not better, functionality and available add-ons to optimize your server to be tailored to your businesses specific needs, has started to draw many away from the dedicated server and begin the transition to the cloud server. Many who have switched to this simple technology – that doesn’t require advanced IT knowledge to operate – are sold by the cloud server solution and would never go back.

More and more places are starting to realize the benefits – both in terms of cost, and capabilities as well – of using virtual solutions for our server and networking needs.

The use of a cloud server, in the UK, or elsewhere, is a great way to save a bit on your hosting costs, and also be on the cutting edge of the technology that many say is the future of networking.With the ability to provide high quality, secure, and affordable service, cloud server hosting companies make a great alternative to traditional dedicated server hosting. Giving you the ability to stay ahead of the curve, and saving yourself a little money in the process, the cloud gives you access to all the features that made dedicated services so popular, without all the hassle.

Source by Dirik Hameed

Unless you’ve spent the last few months trapped in a cave you will undoubtedly have seen, read or heard that “cloud computing” is on its way and is likely to affect the way that many of us use our computers and interact with the internet over the coming years.  Much has been written elsewhere about the implications of cloud computing in general and whether it is indeed destined to transform the way we use the web but, at this juncture, I am particularly interested in exploring what the impact of cloud computing will be on mobile applications.

For the uninitiated, it is probably worth reiterating briefly the key characteristics of cloud computing. In layman’s terms, cloud computing simply refers to the use of powerful shared computing resources which are accessed remotely, typically via a web browser over the internet. Users don’t need to know (or care) where the servers are located or where the programs they are using are running – they just need access to a web browser to use the service from anywhere in the world. In practice, the term cloud computing has grown to refer to a number of related capabilities that can broadly be summarised under following categories:-

i) Infrastructure-as-service “IaaS”

– typically virtual servers (e.g. Amazon EC2, Rackspace Cloud Servers)

ii) Platform-as-a-service “PaaS”

– various services for software development and deployment (e.g. Google Checkout, Force.com>

iii) Software-as-a-service “SaaS”

– fully hosted applications accessed via a browser (e.g. Webmail, Facebook, Google Apps, Salesforce.com)

It is the last category, SaaS, that I wish to focus on because it represents the visible face of cloud computing that most people have already experienced. The advantages of web-based applications such as Gmail, Twitter, and Facebook are pretty obvious – there’s nothing to download to your PC, you can access them from anywhere, they’re constantly being enhanced and every time updates are made they become instantly available to any user when they next login.

For business applications like Saleforce.com’s online CRM tool there are further advantages – such services are highly configurable and scalable so they can accommodate many different types of client from very small to very large with either simple or highly complex requirements. Furthermore, the commercial model employed by most SaaS suppliers (i.e. monthly subscriptions) is attractive since the cost of entry is low (or zero) and the costs associated with acquiring and maintaining computing infrastructure to host the application are completely eliminated.

So, how will this all affect the use and spread of mobile applications?

Over the past couple of years, we’ve witnessed the unprecedented success of the iPhone and Apple’s App Store and this has clearly demonstrated beyond doubt that there is a voracious appetite for mobile applications. Apple has led the way, but we are now seeing a plethora of competing app stores being announced by other players. Notable examples include Google’s Android Marketplace, Nokia’s OVI Store, RIM’s Blackberry App World, Symbian’s Horizon, Microsoft’s Marketplace and the Samsung Application Store.

It seems highly unlikely to me that all these initiatives can succeed, but at the same time, it is a healthy sign that consumers will have more choice, and a wide range of applications will become available to users of many different types of mobile (i.e. not just the iPhone). However, in this new world, where users of all device types (from the humblest Pay-as-you-Go handset to the latest, feature-laden Smartphone) are able to access mobile applications I believe that downloading them from app stores is not the only way forwards.

The cloud computing model provides a highly attractive alternative which actually turns out to be ideal for supporting (relatively) low powered computing devices like mobile handsets. Whilst power-users with top-of-the-range Smartphones may be perfectly happy downloading apps, the “average” user with a basic handset is likely to find that using cloud based applications via a browser is both easier and far better suited to the limitations of their phone. Less computing horsepower and less storage is needed and, as mobile network operators continue to increase data speeds, performance can only get better and better. Already today there are some fine examples of cloud based mobile applications such as Gmail’s mobile portal which provides an excellent email experience entirely via a browser.

Another significant factor to consider is that as the mobile application market matures many commercial organisations will recognise the need to mobilise core business applications. Unlike the majority of “apps” that are being downloaded today, most business applications are more complex and sophisticated and they require proper integration with back-end systems. The SaaS model of delivery described above is therefore ideal for this category of application and will work equally well for mobile devices because of the “zero footprint” required on the handset coupled with the flexibility and scalability available when hosting the application in the cloud.

Over the next couple of years, we are also likely to see a number of technology enhancements which will continue to encourage the development of cloud based mobile applications. Open standards such as BONDI, OneAPI and HTML5 will all help, making it easier for developers to build cloud based applications that can be used across a wide range of mobile devices.

In summary therefore, I predict that cloud computing is highly relevant to the world of mobile applications, is particularly well suited to serving the large numbers of mobile users who do not possess a Smartphone and that it is likely to become a parallel medium for delivering mobile applications to rival the app store approach.  Welcome to the cloud!

Source by Peter Skinner

Cloud Computing, Next wave in Computing: Upcoming Trend in Industry

Cloud computing is Internet (cloud) based development and use of computer technology.

Cloud Computing is an emerging computing technology that uses the internet and central remote servers to maintain data and applications. Cloud computing allows consumers and businesses to use applications without installation and access their personal files at any computer with internet access. This technology allows for much more efficient computing by centralizing storage, memory, processing and bandwidth. Cloud computing is broken down into three segments: “applications,” “platforms,” and “infrastructure.” Each segment serves a different purpose and offers different products for businesses and individuals around the world.

Cloud computing comes into focus only when you think about what IT always needs: a way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. Cloud computing encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the Internet, extends IT’s existing capabilities.

In June 2009, a study conducted by Version One found that 41% of senior IT professionals actually don’t know what cloud computing is and two-thirds of senior finance professionals are confused by the concept, highlighting the young nature of the technology. In Sept 2009, an Aberdeen Group study found that disciplined companies achieved on average an 18% reduction in their IT budget from cloud computing and a 16% reduction in data center power costs.

Depending on who you are talking to, you will see different perceptions about what Cloud Computing actually is, from the simplest web-hosted solutions right through to virtualized processing environments with Web-Service initiated provisioning and decommissioning.

The main challenges for Cloud Computing before it is likely to enjoy wide-spread adoption are the following:

• Persistence & Availability – The ability to continue working during outages or the ability to mitigate outages.
• Privacy and National Security Concerns – The hosting of information outside of your country’s borders does concern Public Sector organizations. The US Patriot Act for example is a concern for some countries in adopting cloud services. It is thought that Country-silted Clouds may be able to address this.
• Geo-Political Information Management Concerns – The Political risk a country takes on by housing information for another country.

Cloud Computing is all about:

1. SaaS (Software as a Service)

These type of cloud computing delivers a single application through the browser to thousands of customers using a multitenant architecture. On the customer side, it means no upfront investment in servers or software licensing; on the provider side, with just one app to maintain, costs are low compared to conventional hosting.

2. Utility computing

The idea is not new, but this form of cloud computing is getting new life from Amazon.com, Sun, IBM, and others who now offer storage and virtual servers that IT can access on demand. Early enterprise adopters mainly use utility computing for supplemental, non-mission-critical needs, but one day, they may replace parts of the datacenter. Other providers offer solutions that help IT create virtual datacenters from commodity servers, such as 3Tera’s AppLogic and Cohesive Flexible Technologies’ Elastic Server on Demand. Liquid Computing LiquidQ offers similar capabilities, enabling IT to stitch together memory, I/O, storage, and computational capacity as a virtualized resource pool available over the network.

3. Web services in the cloud

Closely related to SaaS, Web service providers offer APIs that enable developers to exploit functionality over the Internet, rather than delivering full-blown applications. They range from providers offering discrete business services to the full range of APIs and even conventional credit card processing services.

4. Platform as a service

Another SaaS variation, this form of cloud computing delivers development environments as a service. You build your own applications that run on the provider’s infrastructure and are delivered to your users via the Internet from the provider’s servers.

5. MSP (managed service providers)

One of the oldest forms of cloud computing, a managed service is basically an application exposed to IT rather than to end-users, such as a virus scanning service for e-mail or an application monitoring service (which Mercury, among others, provides). Managed security services delivered by Secure Works, IBM, and Verizon fall into this category, as do such cloud-based anti-spam services as Postini, recently acquired by Google. Other offerings include desktop management services, such as those offered by Center Beam or Ever dream.

6. Service commerce platforms

A hybrid of SaaS and MSP, this cloud computing service offers a service hub that users interact with. They’re most common in trading environments, such as expense management systems that allow users to order travel or secretarial services from a common platform that then coordinates the service delivery and pricing within the specifications set by the user. Think of it as an automated service bureau. Well-known examples include Rearden Commerce and Ariba.

7. Internet integration

The integration of cloud-based services is in its early days. OpSource, which mainly concerns itself with serving SaaS providers, recently introduced the OpSource Services Bus, which employs in-the-cloud integration technology from a little startup called Boomi. SaaS provider Workday recently acquired another player in this space, CapeClear, an ESB (enterprise service bus) provider that was edging toward b-to-b integration. Way ahead of its time, Grand Central — which wanted to be a universal “bus in the cloud” to connect SaaS providers and provide integrated solutions to customers — flamed out in 2005.

Citrix Cloud Center

C3 is designed to give cloud providers a complete set of service delivery infrastructure building blocks for hosting, managing and delivering cloud-based computing services. C3 includes a reference architecture that combines the individual capabilities of several Citrix product lines to offer a powerful, dynamic, secure and highly available service-based infrastructure ideally suited to large-scale, on-demand delivery of both IT infrastructure and application services. This architecture consists of four key components:

• Platform – Powered by Citrix XenServerTM Cloud Edition:  The new XenServer Cloud Edition is a powerful virtual infrastructure solution optimized for service provider environments. It combines the cloud-proven scalability of the Xen® hypervisor which powers most of the world’s largest clouds, with all the virtualization management and dynamic workload provisioning capabilities of the full Citrix XenServer product line ( see separate announcement on XenServer 5), enabling cloud providers to host and manage any combination of Windows® and Linux environments. XenServer Cloud Edition also features an innovative consumption based pricing model to meet the needs of service providers that charge their customers based on metered resource use.
• Delivery – Powered by Citrix® NetScaler’s®:  Through its rich policy-based AppExpert engine, Citrix NetScaler’s delivers cloud-based resources to users over the Web, continually optimizing user application performance and security by dynamically scaling the number of virtual machines (VMs) or servers available in response to changing workload demands and infrastructure availability. This allows cloud providers to balance workloads across large distributed cloud environments and transparently redirect traffic to alternate capacity on or off premise in the event of network failures or datacenter outages.  NetScaler’s can also dramatically reduce server requirements in large cloud centers by offloading protocol and transaction processing from backend server pools. NetScaler’s proven architecture is designed for highly scalable, multi-tenant Web applications and delivers Web services to an estimated 75 percent of all Internet users each day.
• Bridge – Powered by Citrix WANScaler:  As larger enterprises begin experimenting with cloud-based services for parts of their own infrastructure and application hosting strategy, cloud providers will also need reliable and secure ways to provide a seamless bridge between hosted cloud services and premise-based enterprise services. Over time, C3 will incorporate a set of open interfaces that allow customers to easily move virtual machines and application resources into a cloud-based datacenter and back again as needed. WANScaler technology will play a critical role in this enterprise bridge by accelerating and optimizing application traffic between the cloud and the enterprise datacenter, even over long distances.
• Orchestration – Powered by Citrix Workflow Studio TM: Tying it all together, Citrix Workflow Studio provides a powerful orchestration and workflow capability that allows the products in the C3 portfolio to be dynamically controlled and automated, and integrated with customer business and IT policy. Workflow Studio allows customers to control their infrastructure dynamically–integrating previously disconnected processes and products into a single powerful, orchestrated and cohesive system. This unique capability will make it easier for cloud providers to enable highly efficient burst able clouds that automatically scale resources up and down based on demand, shifting hardware resources to where they are most needed and powering them down for maximum power savings when not needed.

Today, with such cloud-based interconnection seldom in evidence, cloud computing might be more accurately described as “sky computing,” with many isolated clouds of services which IT customers must plug into individually. On the other hand, as virtualization and SOA permeate the enterprise, the idea of loosely coupled services running on an agile, scalable infrastructure should eventually make every enterprise a node in the cloud. It’s a long-running trend with a far-out horizon. But among big megatrends, cloud computing is the hardest one to argue with in the long term.

Source by vinoth

With private clouds, the IT providers can make elementary changes internally in how their IT infrastructure is deployed and run to get the benefits of cloud computing. An application hosted in a private cloud environment can allow you greater scalability and reach to bigger customer base.

There are some key steps businesses can take to reap the benefits of cloud computing before they go for cloud-based environment:  

• Do Your Homework –Before jumping to cloud computing wagon,understand your business needs and take decisions accordingly. Do you need agile, faster and secure application? And if yes, at what cost? Focus on how many applications can be adapted to cloud-based environment and keep note of the deployment time, cost, value, performance factors. A sound homework would save you from any future hassles.

• Choose a Trusted Service Provider – Choosing a trusted and capable cloud computing provider will solve your most concerns. Try to get as much information about your service provider prior to entering into a relationship. Select a company that has widespread expertise in running a standard, global enterprise infrastructure with hosted private cloud-based solutions. Ensure your cloud service provider can provide rock-solid private cloud services and will handle all facets of your cloud environment.

• Access Enterprise Features – Ensure that the cloud computing services you are paying for include enterprises features. This would not only ensure world-class service but also many standard components like static IP, persistent storage, and certain amount of free bandwidth etc. You can go with companies like NaviSite. NaviSite is a leading provider of cloud enabled enterprise hosting and application management services, offering a comprehensive suite of customized IT as Service solutions.  

• Build a Cloud Prototype – Don’t go for all out transformation for the entire IT set up. Start with a small prototype – a cloud of, say around, less than 50 machines. Choose applications which are supposed to get most benefit from cloud environment. Compare their past performance, cost, value etc. to the cloud-based results. And then move forward accordingly.   

• Evaluate Control Level – Evaluate how  much control you have on your applications as cloud is famous for providing you greater choices of how you want to run your applications and what you can apply from a service-level agreement standpoint to those applications. Go for the comprehensive documentation and evaluation of internal control that will be needed to support management’s assessment.  

• Commit to a short-term service contract – Initially avoid making a long-term contract. A short-term contract of six months or so will give your company more leverage over service quality and related issues, particularly as the renewal date approaches. This will help you judge the service provider in proper measures.  

Source by Saumya Aggarwal

Drake tax software is one of the most affordable and features rich tax return filing application available for tax planners. But most importantly drake tax software offers full financial management options with its vast number of add-ons, diverse forms and import/export features compatible with large number of accounting and CRM applications.

Many tax preparers have realized the benefits of having tax preparation software hosted in the cloud environment with benefits such as anytime anywhere data accessibility, collaboration and security of the data. Before going into the details of benefits of Drake tax software hosting here are the list of some Drake features that are very useful for the tax preparers.

• Diverse number of forms:  Drake tax software includes the most comprehensive list of tax forms and state specific forms to help tax preparers. Further the tax software offers comprehensive tax research features for tax planning for the clients.

• Easy Export and import of data: Of all the tax software, Drake tax application is the most comprehensive in terms of import and export of data from diverse application be it they accounting or  CRM application and in the process saving data entry time and costs. Not only excel import bust also scanned document data can be imported to the Drake tax application.

• Drake Add-ons: Drake provides a large number of Add-ons to make the tax practice both faster and to offer diverse range of services for their clients. The add-ons include drake tax planner, Drake document management systems, client write ups and payroll applications.

Drake Tax preparation in the cloud environment

The efficiency of tax return filing process and use of the other features of the Drake Tax program can be considerably enhanced if the Tax application is accessed through third party terminal servers or cloud servers. This means hosting the database on third party terminal servers and accessing the application as a local desktop interface instead of that on Local LAN. The benefits of Drake tax Application hosting are:

Cost Reduction: Application lifetime costs may involve software licenses, servers installations, occasional upgrades and technical support costs. With Drake accessed on a  terminal server there is no need to install local network, neither there is any requirement of dedicated technical support professional as IT help desk is provided by the service provider.

No IT obsoleteness: Since the local IT infrastructure needs are considerably reduced, Drake Tax software hosting also means that obsoleteness of the IT infrastructure is a thing of the past. With the application installed and run on the latest terminal server, users have the advantage of access to most advanced technology without any upfront costs involved.

Reacting to the market forces swiftly: Since the cloud hosting services are available on demand and the infrastructure bought at a short notice the tax preparers are able to cater well to the increased demand during the tax preparation season without any additional IT costs involved. Further they have to buy the services only when they need and hence further save IT costs for unutilized IT Infrastructure.

Collaboration and sharing with Drake Tax software hosting

A major handicap for the mobile tax professional is the inability to access the tax application beyond the LAN or the office premises. With Drake tax software hosting not only they can share and collaborate with other users in real time but also share, review and oversee what changes are made to the files by different users.

Collaboration feature allow the tax professional to:

• Have better clients interaction and available to troubleshoot clients issues  or share files with them from anywhere remotely not necessitating one to one physical interaction and thus saving both time and transportation costs.
• Use outsourced cheap labour for tax season and still being able to keep a tab on the quality of work done or the progress of the tax preparation process through real time collaboration.

Drake Tax application hosting and financial data security

Remote data backup is more secure than the local back up as:

• Data is stored in multiple locations automatically on a daily basis in case of remote backup which may not be possible in case of locally backed data due to unavailability of technical professionals.
• Monitoring of the local network for security threats may involve dedicated IT professionals and thus involving recurring costs which can be easily possible and in more comprehensive ways in a hosted environment.

Multiple Applications hosting in an integrated manner with Drake Tax software

Drake tax software not only comes with most comprehensive list of Add-ons bust is also easily integrated with many other applications in comprehensive manner for easy import and export of data to enable financial consultants to offer diverse solution to their clients and thereby increasing business profitability. Drake tax software can be integrated with accounting software such as QuickBooks and Peachtree as well as CRM software such as ACT! By sage.

Source by williamsmith

Wherever you look today, you see the CLOUD. Well! It’s the CLOUD COMPUTING that I’m talking about!

Some call it Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), some Software as a Service (SaaS) and others as a Platform as a Service (PaaS). Players like IBM and Google have already positioned themselves strongly in this arena whereas others like Yahoo, Microsoft, eBay and Salesforce.com are not far behind. Everyone is not only talking about cloud but also seriously considering the option of switching to cloud-based environment. Unlimited computing power and collaboration at a massive scale makes cloud a perfect solution for enterprises of all sizes.

Since Cloud Computing is still evolving, enterprises need to understand their needs and decide whether their business can tap the benefits of cloud or not. So let’s begin with the five most important questions they need to ask about cloud when evaluating the cloud environment vs. their business goals.

Key questions before you embark on cloud computing services:

1. Are you looking for on-demand dynamic capacity? Do you need high scalability in the way you run and manage your applications? If yes, then cloud computing is right for you. By leveraging hosted private clouds, you will get more flexibility and unprecedented control in allocating resources dynamically. You can quickly respond if there is an application request for more storage in a more flexible, highly dynamic, highly virtualized environment.

2. Is your business or industry demands stringent compliance needs? Regulatory compliance is a critical issue in today’s time. Non-compliance can damage your business and harm the image of the organization. The vendor you choose to provide cloud computing services may not have appropriate support for required compliance needs. Your data, which is stored in cloud, may be compliant in one location but not in another location. This may harm your data and impact your business goals negatively.

3. What is the preferred technology and platform for your organization? Your current technology, application framework or platform used in business will decide how easier or tougher it will be for you to migrate to cloud environment. The same application framework can be utilized to access the cloud-based service of a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) provider. Migration from your existing platform or technology to cloud environment is going to be much more difficult than you can imagine. The issue of lock-in becomes more challenging when you think about changing your cloud computing service provider. So try to see the level of interoperability your existing IT infrastructure would require to adapt to cloud environment. With hosted clouds, the IT providers can make elementary changes internally in how their IT infrastructure is deployed and run to get the benefits of cloud computing.

4. Do you have limited budget? Have you got a very tight budget and can’t spend much on building expensive IT infrastructure? Then cloud is a tailor-made choice for you. The cost of entry to hosted private cloud is low. Hosted private cloud services are priced modestly. Not just that, Cloud computing minimizes or eliminates the ongoing costs of traditional on-premises applications such as software maintenance, patching and upgrades etc.

5. Where are your end-users located? If your end-users are located in a definite location, then they can be served with a nearby data center. But if they are spread across the globe then internet would be used as a platform to deliver your applications to the end-users. And this scenario provides you more hosting options and greater advantage through cloud-based solutions. With hosted cloud, applications are always current and the end-users can get an enhanced experience.

When you are choosing an implementation path for Cloud, make sure you are considering these questions and other key aspects (like cost, time to market, performance etc.) that you will need to tackle in a cloud environment. Choose wisely! If you have decided that your business could also benefit from the promise of cloud computing, the next step is to select a service provider you can trust.

NaviSite, an established leader in cloud-enabled services, offers NaviCloud, a unique cloud-based platform that meets your enterprise-wide hosting and application management needs. NaviSite’s inexpensive cloud computing infrastructure helps start ups and established enterprises manage their IT infrastructure, leaving more funds available for a number of attractive opportunities. You can leverage NaviSite’s recognized experience and expertise in cloud-based enterprise solutions.

Source by Saumya Aggarwal

What is Cloud computing?

Cloud computing is getting extremely popular these days. Especially if you have a high traffic website / web based application and you don’t want to spend too much into hosting high end dedicated servers – cloud computing / cloud hosting is what you are looking for,.

Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. Basically a cloud is a virtualization of resources that manages and maintains itself. Broadly classified under the three categories:

1. IaaS: Infrastructure as a service.
2. PasS: Platform as a service.
3. SaaS: Software as a service.

So how does a cloud hosting differentiate with other hosting? The most important diffence is that cloud computing is sold “on demand”. This also means that there is no binding on you to buy heavy duty hosting servers and be worried about how to manage, maintain and keep on paying for the extra resources where you don’t need any. This on demand service is typically sold by hour or minute and has no load on the customer to worry about the maintenance or paying for extra space or bandwidth. Significant innovations in virtualization and distributed computing, as well as improved access to high-speed Internet and a weak economy, have accelerated interest in cloud computing.

Typically there are two types of clouds – Public and Private. A public cloud as the name says – sells services to anyone on the Internet where as a Private cloud is more like a proprietary network or a data center that caters to a limited number of people for hosting services.

Infrastructure as a Service (IasS):

A successful example of cloud computing providers would be Amazon Web services that provides virtual server instances with unique IP address and blocks of storage on demand. An Amazon web service is extremely popular and apart from Amazon there are other reliable and efficient providers such as GoGrid and Rackspace. As the service involves users to pay as they need – its often highly beneficial and can be translated to other ulitity services used such as telephone, electricity and often this model is also called as utility computing. Benefits to the clients:

1. Stop worrying about heavy traffic and bandwidth requirements.
2. Pay as you go.
3. No need to buy high configuration servers from day one.
4. Low maintenance.

Platform as a Service (PaaS):

Platform-as-a-service in the cloud is defined as a set of software and product development tools hosted on the provider’s infrastructure. Developers create applications on the provider’s platform over the Internet. PaaS providers may use APIs, website portals or gateway software installed on the customer’s computer. Force.com, (an outgrowth of Salesforce.com) and GoogleApps are examples of PaaS. Developers need to know that currently, there are not standards for interoperability or data portability in the cloud. Some providers will not allow software created by their customers to be moved off the provider’s platform.

Software as a Service (SaaS):

In the software-as-a-service cloud model, the vendor supplies the hardware infrastructure, the software product and interacts with the user through a front-end portal. SaaS is a very broad market. Services can be anything from Web-based email to inventory control and database processing. Because the service provider hosts both the application and the data, the end user is free to use the service from anywhere. There are several successful SaaS model running all over the web.

Agile Technosys: Cloud computing

Agile Technosys has indepth expertise with Cloud computing especially with models of IaaS (cloud hosting) and SaaS (Software as a Service). Agile Technosys has been vital in creating some very complex SaaS models including some very niche domain areas.

With Cloud hosting – Agile Technosys has terrific experience with Amazon and GoGrid. As a matter of fact we recommend cloud hosting to every of our customers – which helps in lowering the overall project implementation costs.

Source by Poonam Narkhede

Here is a list of the Top 5 Cloud Computing providers. The key parameters used for comparing these cloud platforms include when the platforms were introduced, support for various operating systems/languages, current adoption levels of the platforms and the overall potential of the platform. A good understanding of the key cloud computing platforms is critical to understand the current state of cloud computing and the overall direction of the industry. This in turn is very useful while making a choice for an appropriate cloud computing platform. Please read the following article Comparing SaaS, PaaS and IaaS to understand some of the terminology used in this article.

Amazon
Clearly the market leader in Cloud Computing and primarily a IaaS vendor.EC2 and S3 are the two most popular services available as part of Amazon Web Services. They also have the most wide variety of services available as part of their cloud platform.

• There are indications that Amazon may have a total of 1.8 million deployed instances and showing 10% overall growth in deployments
• Indications are they had a total revenue of 220 million USD revenue from their Cloud business
• There are around 100,000 customers using Amazon Web Services

Rackspace
Rackspace which has long been one of the largest players in the managed hosting market quickly transformed itself into a highly successful Cloud Computing provider primarily as an IaaS provider. They have two key services Cloud Servers and Cloud Files which are the equivalent of EC2 and S3 from Amazon.

• Indicating 100% growth in Cloud Revenues from 2008 to 2009
• Added around 40,000 new customers in the last 4 quarters
• Cloud Revenue has been 56 million USD in 2009

Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com was one of the earliest Cloud Computing companies to get setup with a specific focus on CRM and functioned as a SaaS company.Salesforce.com first started in 1999 and has grown significantly from its initial launch with a continuous focus on CRM. Force.com was launched in 2007 as a custom application development platform as an entry into the PaaS market but has not been able to garner a significant market due its proprietary platform. Given the specific nature of the platform Amazon and Rackspace have been ranked higher in this list even though Salesforce has a higher revenue.

• Total of 55,000 corporate customers and 1.5 million individual subscribers.
• Total revenue of $1.3 billion for 2009

Google
Google made a late entry into the Cloud Computing business with two services, Google Apps which primarily targets the SaaS space and the Google App Engine which provides a PaaS model for businesses and individuals to deploy their Web Apps. They have quickly made a mark with both the platforms and have made significant growth in the overall cloud computing market.

• Google Apps has 1 million customers and an approximate revenue of $50 million
• Google App Engine does not have any numbers publicly available, since the paid version launched a year back they may need some more time before we get a sense of the adoption.

Microsoft
Microsoft was the last major player to enter into the market and as expected launched a platform Azure based on their Windows/Azure stack. While they have continued to claim that Azure is not tied to .NET, the expectation is the platform will see most adoption from Microsoft shops with a focus on .NET and Windows based technologies and platforms.

• Indications are that around 10,000 customers have moved to Azure
• Since the launch has been less than 6 months back its a little early to track adoption.
• We rank it high due to the high potential of the platform and tight integration with Microsoft based development platforms.

Conclusion
Amazon and Rackspace continue to be the key players in Cloud Computing with a key focus on IaaS as the core service they offer. Given the core expertise of these companies it is unlikely that they will venture into other aspects of the Cloud and they are unlikely to offer SaaS or PaaS services anytime soon. It is highly likely that all growth in the IaaS segment of Cloud Computing will be distributed between these two companies. Microsoft and Google are likely to be key players in the PaaS space clearly segmented between .NET and Java applications. Salesforce on the other hand is likely to remain a player focused purely on the CRM market and primarily as a SaaS provider.

Check our Blog Technology Trendz for more details.

Source by Kaushik