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Great ambience after rain in my apartment complex, kinda felt like I’m at where I belong, first time!

What in the world? More reasons to keep the data with yourselves?

http://lifehacker.com/5813861/dropbox-accidentally-unlocked-all-accounts-for-4-hours

Everyone of us would have used some online storage mechanism for sure, there are hundreds of free storage providers starting obviously from Google, Dropbox etc… Even Ubuntu have one, Ubuntu One! Pretty much the logic & business work on the same principle. Some storage is given for free and if you want more than that then it is paid as you need service. So yes, this is ‘Cloud Storage Service’, why? The end user is free to use these wherever they’re regardless of location, Devices used. The advantage is very simple; you get the access where ever you go and do not need to carry it with you and some businesses do run in this model itself.

The below snippet is taken from HowStuffWorks page;

• Google Docs allows users to upload documents, spreadsheets and presentations to Google’s data servers. Users can edit files using a Google application. Users can also publish documents so that other people can read them or even make edits, which means Google Docs is also an example of cloud computing.
• Web e-mail providers like Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail store e-mail messages on their own servers. Users can access their e-mail from computers and other devices connected to the Internet.
• Sites like Flickr and Picasa host millions of digital photographs. Their users create online photo albums by uploading pictures directly to the services’ servers.
• YouTube hosts millions of user-uploaded video files.
• Web site hosting companies like StartLogic, Hostmonster and GoDaddy store the files and data for client Web sites.
• Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace allow members to post pictures and other content. All of that content is stored on the respective site’s servers.
• Services like Xdrive, MediaMax and Strongspace offer storage space for any kind of digital data.

So now we know that we do use cloud services, of course may not be calling it in that fancy way. The one which is familiar is as described before is ‘Cloud Storage Services’. How about extending them and making business around that?

Cloud Computing at its current form goes as;

Iaas => Infrastructure as a Service.

Paas => Platform as a Service.

Saas => Software as a Service.

To run an company, what all do you need? Let’s list it down;

1. Office Space

2. Lab Racks to host your servers/workstations (well then air coolers, redundant power supplies, cabling experts and so on…)

3. People to Manage space, we call them facilities. People to Manage the Network/Helpdesk Infrastructure, we call them the IT people.

4. Costly software * (Number of Users)

5. Think about departments – You’ll typically have Finance/HR/IT/Facilities/Security and so on…

Now, in cloud computing – you obviously can’t eliminate every bit of it however how about shedding some OPEX on whatever you do.

If you have 1000 Employees, you need 1000 licenses of Operating Systems/Generic softwares like email/chat client/Specialized softwares that gets your job done/ & people to manage that and keep it up.

In cloud computing, you do not buy anything (well don’t have to), but only pay a subscription to use and that too only on how much you need. You subscribe to software/applications including the systems/servers that run these applications.

Watch the Video, it is very simple and nicely done. So are you new to cloud computing???