Is Cloud Computing right for a small or medium company? [Author: Andrew Loftus]
Basic multi-tenant (lots of different, unrelated companys use the same service) Hosted Services (like Exchange Email) are workable and have a place for companies with a geographically spread workforce but these services but keep an eye on the costs and make sure you understand them fully before committing. When you get down to your own LoB (Line of Business) application/s this makes the decision very different. You need to check with the application developer if their software is available as a multi-tenant cloud based application (the answer at the moment is usually "no"). If you want to progress on to Cloud Computing for all your programs then you need to look at a "private cloud". This is where you have you own servers/computers - but they are hosted for you in "The Cloud". This is possible with most modern applications, but the costs of doing this may make you re-consider the proposition.