Could computing simply put is the delivery of hosted services via the internet sold to consumers on demand. In a lot of respects it is similar by nature to an electricity grid where by the services are sold in accordance to the amount of usage e.g. number of hours, connections or data transfer.

The idea is quite simple, rather than hosting your IT requirements yourself, get a cloud computing provider to do it for you. This is ideal for businesses that require databases, messaging services, email, ecommerce websites etc, as they do not have to buy and maintain the hardware and licenses to host their business applications themselves. It can be used to host company intranets, CRMs, business applications served via web browsers and even to host the lower tiers of desktop applications.

The good

Obviously there is a huge initial cost benefit to this. No upfront CapEx for servers and software licences sounds very appetising for Small to Medium enterprises (SME’s) especially for those just getting started. However beware...the ongoing costs may be more than you think especially if your business requires large amounts of network traffic.

Another benefit to cloud computing is scalability. If business is booming and out grows your current IT requirements, simply buy more cloud computing power. Cloud computing even caters for seasonal spikes by temporarily ramping up your services for a designated period of time.

The bad

Essentially many of the concerns surrounding Cloud computing have been summarized in the letter by the Australian Prudential Regularity Authority (APRA). The key point made in this letter is the lack of legislation in regards to the cloud computing vendors’ legal responsibility for the data hosted on their infrastructure. It raises the concerns surrounding privacy, security and potential loss of services.

Another disadvantage to Cloud computing is distance. Latency may be a problem for companies in Australia as many of the cloud data centres are hosted in the US and Asia. However Fujitsu has recently announced that they will deploy a Microsoft Azure data centre here in Australia.

So who are the major players in Cloud Computing?

• Salesforce
• Amazon
• Google
• Microsoft

More Information

For more information about Cloud Computing and whether it is right for your business contact the sales team at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .