Cheap way to a fully redundant cluster! Over the past 18 months, cloud computing has become an increasingly important component of the individual business; large and startup alike. More and more companies are turning to the cloud for their hosting, storage, and application needs. As companies switch their infrastructure over, the high-availability of these services becomes an ever important, but often overlooked, piece of the critical infrastructure puzzle. In this article we will discuss how to achieve High-Availability on a tight budget which is surprisingly easy and inexpensive for most organizations to achieve. Using just a few of the open source utilities out on the market today, companies are able to achieve total redundancy and high-availability by utilizing Gigenet's Los Angeles (LA) Cloud Servers and Chicago (CHI) Cloud Servers. We will be looking at one way businesses can leverage their cloud by providing high-availability services—affording respective clientèle the top-notch service they expect, and the individual company the fail-safe infrastructure they deserve. The 4 technologies that we are going to discuss to achieve this desired effect of high-availability services in the infrastructure are as follows: HAproxy (For Load Balancing) BIND + GeoDNS (For less Latency and High-Availability) MySQL (For Database back-end and replication) Apache / Nginx (For serving the content) - Making all of these opensource technologies work together is extremely simple as the step by step guides will show in future articles. For now lets take a glimpse at each of the aforementioned technologies! - HAProxy – The Reliable, High Performance TCP/HTTP Load Balancer http://haproxy.1wt.eu/ “HAProxy is a free, very fast and reliable solution offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications. It is particularly suited for web sites crawling under very high loads while needing persistence or Layer7 processing. Supporting tens of thousands of connect

GigeNETCloud V3.0.6 Release in LA! Chicago customers will soon be migrated to new portal! We are excited to announce the latest version of our cloud portal version 3.0.6! This is only available in the LAX cloud at the moment but we will be replacing the Chicago Legacy portal (V2) with the new GCloud Portal (V3) in a few short weeks! The new system is on a completely different database for users so your Chicago login will not work in LA and your LA login will not work in Chicago. You will need to sign up as a new user if you would like to obtain an account in the other location. When we replace the Legacy portal we will automatically migrate all users in to one portal (V3). We are also please to announce the direct connectivity between our Chicago and LA datacenters allowing your cloud servers to utilize the private network to communicate with each other! Another major feature released is the highly requested API. The API is now fully functional and can be setup through the LAX portal and once everyone is migrated to the new portal the API will still function the same. On this new release there has been many enhancements in stability and features. We have attached a full changelog to the bottom of this communication. On the prior release there was only a small choice of Operating Systems. We have now added many more operating systems listed below. List of available operating systems in LAX Version 3.0.6: - Arch Linux 64/32 (06-2011) - CentOS 5.6 64/32 - ClearOS 5.1 64bit - Debian 5.08 64/32 - Debian 6.01 64/32 - Ubuntu 10.0.4 64/32 - Ubuntu 8.04 64/32 - VirtualMin 64bit - Windows 2003 R2 enterprise 64bit - Windows 2008 R2 enterprise 64bit * If you need CPanel simply install one of CPanel’s supported operating systems above and place a ticket to have the latest CPanel installed. Pricing for CPanel on the cloud is $10.00/month. The Newest Release in production is 3.0.6 coming from 3.0.2 so here is a list of changes we made to the system since 3.0.2: CCS 3.0.3 —– - Feature: A

Tilera Announces the Release of its 'Ultimate' Cloud Computing Processor US processor designer Tilera recently announced the release of its new cloud computing processor which is seen as a major competitor to the Intel x/86 / x64 general purpose processor. The company claims that it is the ultimate Cloud Computing processor. Tilera's computing processor, TILE-Gx™ 3000 processor family is specifically designed for today’s most common cloud computing applications. Co-developed with some of the world’s largest Internet brands, the TILE-Gx 3000 processors are optimized for cloud datacenters. The TILE Gx 3000 family, is based around a 64-bit core, and comes in 36, 64 and 100-core versions. The company is expecting that it will consume 80% lower Wattage than Intel’s recently announced 'Sandy Bridge Xeon,' which is claimed to have a 10x performance per Watt advantage over the Intel device. Tilera’s Director of Marketing, Ihab Bishara, stated “that the company has been working with many of the leading Cloud Computing businesses on the development of the 3000 processor family.” The processors target scale-out data centers, particularly high throughput-oriented applications. These include web applications that require high throughput processing and low latency, database applications and the increasingly important in-memory databases, which require high-memory throughput and storage but in turn offer much faster and richer performance. Each core includes 32 kilobytes (kB) of L1 I-cache, 32 kB of L1 D-cache and 256 kB L2 cache, with up to 32 megabytes L3 coherent cache across the device. Processor utilization is optimized using advanced memory stripping that utilizes up to 4 integrated 72-bit DDR3 memory controllers that support up to one terabyte (TB) total capacity. The TILE-Gx 3000 series integrates smart NIC hardware for pre-processing, load balancing, and buffer management of incoming traffic. As well, the TILE architecture is supported with the latest Linux release (2.6.36) enabling users to get their Linux-ba

There is a global industry trend towards providing IT infrastructure as a 'service.' Auckland company, Softsource, who employs a staff of 42, is planning to heavily invest in 'cloud computing' by building a $10 million data center in Albany, NY, so that it can rent computer servers and storage to businesses around the country on a "pay-as-you-go" basis. All of the computer equipment for the data center has been supplied by Hewlett-Packard. General manager Pablo Garcia-Curtis said, “a distinguishing feature between the facility and larger centers recently commissioned by IBM and Datacom was that customers would be able to increase or decrease the amount of infrastructure they rented within 15 to 30 minutes through a self-service online portal.” For instance, “businesses will have the ability increase capacity to process accounts at the end of the financial year, without having equipment sitting idle during the rest of the year.” In March, Hewlett-Packard announced a plan to build a $60 million data center in the Waikato town of Tuakau. Early customers of the data center include DB Breweries, Genesis Energy, Navico and Specsavers. Mr. Garcia-Curtis said, “Softsource might install wind turbines and solar panels to increase its 'green' credentials.” According to the study entitled 'The State of the Data Center' that was conducted by AFCOM, a global association of data centers, data centers have expanded rapidly in recent years. The study found, “approximately 44.2 percent of data centers occupy more floor space than they did three years ago. An additional 49.4 percent are either currently expanding or have plans to do so in the near future.” The study also revealed that cloud computing has played an important role in the expansion of data centers worldwide Jill Yaoz, CEO of AFCOM, said that “change and technological innovations are now an accepted part of day-to-day life, making it important for data center managers to be able to adapt to the new technologies and directions emerging in the industry.” She

Abiquo Receives Best Cloud Management Award from Cloud Computing World Series Awards At the Cloud Computing World Forum 2011 that took place at the Olympia Conference Center in London, England, Abiquo, the leading Enterprise Cloud Management software provider, received the Cloud Computing World Series award for Best Cloud Management Solution, beating out Hewlett-Packard and VMware. The annual Cloud Computing World Series Awards recognizes the best Cloud products and services. An independent panel of judges, including press editors, industry analysts, management consultants, and practicing IT architects and leaders, selects the winners. This award adds to the many honors Abiquo has received this year. It recently won the Citrix Synergy Award for Best Partner Solution for Virtual Datacenters. It also was recognized among "Top 100" vendors by CRN and AlwaysOn. The judges at the Cloud Computing World Forum 2011 had to select from hundreds of nominations in each category. Wendy Perilli, vice president, global marketing for Abiquo, said, “This is the second year in a row that we were recognized for this prestigious international award, but to win in the Cloud Management category this year is very gratifying. The short listed nominees for the awards, along with other assessments of the market like the recent Forrester private cloud report, suggests the top three in the market are firming up. We are very pleased to be cited consistently in that group, and in this case to come out on top." Abiquo was a finalist in two award categories - Best Cloud Management Solution and Best Virtualization Product or Service. Abiquo received the award for Best Cloud Management Solution because the product is the most complete enterprise-class cloud management solution that is available today. With Abiquo's enterprise cloud management software, organizations can manage a globally deployed computing infrastructure, comprising unlimited physical and Cloud resources including private, public and hybrid Clouds through a "single pane

Recently, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba announced that they will collaborate to push cloud computing and affiliated services to infrastructure organizations. The two firms have signed a memorandum of understanding to begin tie-up negotiations. In a joint statement, the companies said that they will, “work together to identify and develop opportunities in areas such as water supply, energy, health-care and transportation where cloud-related services can be deployed.” The companies will also collaborate in the areas of networking and "intelligent infrastructure." According to the statement, Toshiba will supply its domain knowledge in critical infrastructure areas and HP will supply its IT expertise. The collaboration will also help HP to deploy products and services being researched in the company's labs. HP has research work taking place in such fields as cloud services, security, infrastructure development, and solar energy. Toshiba said the collaboration will help grow its Smart Community Business Division. In October 2010, Toshiba established a dedicated Smart Community Business Division to promote its smart community business. Smart Community Business Division works on building smart grids and modernization of infrastructure. By taking advantage of cloud computing and other opportunities in the area of ‘smart community’, the company forecasts sales in its smart community business, including grid and building facilities, will triple to 900 billion yen ($11 billion) in the year ending March 2016. Last month, Toshiba acquired smart meter company Landis+Gyr for $2.3 billion for the purpose of helping Toshiba expand the Smart Community Business Division. As well as being a computer and chip maker, Toshiba also makes products for other industries including energy, health care and transportation. For instance, Toshiba's power system company makes equipment for nuclear power plants, and its medical systems unit makes X-ray equipment and magnetic resonance imaging systems. As well, both companies are looking to

SecureIT Selected to Assess Security Risks and Compliance of CTC and SoftLayer Offerings U.S. Federal agencies are now required to implement a “cloud-first” policy when considering new information technology purchases. The U.S. Government has executed its cloud computing strategy by setting up government-wide contracts which must meet new, stringent security requirements. The cloud computing services which agencies purchase must comply with security requirements based on NIST and the providers must demonstrate continuous monitoring of the security controls validated by 3rd party security assessors. SecureIT has been selected to provide an independent cybersecurity assessment of cloud-computing solutions to support GSA Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) contract. CTC and SoftLayer were awarded contracts for GSA Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing solutions. The contract permits CTC and SoftLayer to provide government entities virtual machines, cloud storage, and web hosting services to support the Federal government cloud computing strategy to overcome inefficiencies and improve government service delivery. SecureIT will be assessing the security controls of integrated infrastructure in the three lots awarded which includes - Virtual Machines, Cloud Storage, and Cloud Web Hosting. GSA specified the assessment and authorization process which is based on Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). FedRAMP was established to provide a standard approach to assessing and authorizing cloud computing services and products. FedRAMP allows joint authorizations and continuous security monitoring oversight for Federal and Commercial cloud computing systems intended for multi-agency use. Jim Graham, SVP of SecureIT's Federal Practice said, “This is a ground breaking contract for the federal government and we are pleased to have been selected to perform the independent security assessment.” Computer Technologies Consultants, Inc. (CTC) has been delivering managed hosting to governm

At the recent AMD Fusion Developer Summit in Bellevue, Washington, a Microsoft official announced that is preparing to release tools that should make it easy for web developers to generate exclusive applications that obtain benefits of parallel computing architectures, whether on tablets, smartphones, or in virtualized environments on the cloud. Herb Sutter, Microsoft’s principal architect for native languages, told attendees of the Summit that Microsoft is presently making an eager attempt to convey C++ programming capabilities to GPUs. He also said that the decisive objective of the company is to assist C++ developers to develop the range of this model to cloud computing and multicore systems and to develop C++ in a cloud environment ahead of the core group of developers that at present occupied in it. Sutter stated, “This is the first year that conventional tablets and smartphones are dual core. We’re positioning and assorting supercomputer on all desk, living room and pocket. It’s not excellent thing, if we can’t write the code.” C++ is one of the most commonly used programming languages. C++ is an "object oriented" programming language. It implements "data abstraction" using a concept called "classes", along with other features to allow object-oriented programming. C++ uses object oriented programming and classes which focus on data. Classes help programmers with the organization of their code. They can also be beneficial in helping programmers avoid mistakes. Even so, there are times when mistakes do occur. When this happens, classes can be instrumental in finding bugs and correcting them. Microsoft also announced that it had launched some advanced features in the latest version of its Parallel Patterns Library (PPL), in addition to it in the C++ Concurrency Runtime. The next version of Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2012, will offer tools that coders can use to write programs that work with a new extension to the C++ language. The extension, C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP), is design

Now that it is June 2011, there are a few new trends emerging in cloud computing. Below is a list of the newest trends in cloud computing: Definition of Cloud Changing: With cloud computing becoming more widely established among organizations and new technologies and uses for cloud computing expanding, it is expected that the definition of cloud computing will be changing. When you ask a diverse number of computing experts for a definition of cloud computing, you tend to get a variety of different answers. Some emphasize the clouding computing model in their answers and some emphasize the private cloud model in their description of the cloud. It is expected that definition of cloud computing will be expanded to cover a full range of cloud computing technologies. Public Cloud Computing as a Utility: Cloud computing is expected to be used more as a utility. This involves the packaging of computing resources, such as computation and services as a metered service which is much like a public utility such as electricity, and water. This allows for a low or no start up costs to acquire cloud computing resources. The resources are essentially rented. Amazon’s EC2 public cloud is an example as it makes use of the applications that need to spin up servers and turn them of in an instant to benefit from the hourly fee structure offered by Amazon. Emergence of the Managed Cloud: Managed cloud hosting is designed around a high availability architecture that provides built-in resiliency. IT managers like the managed cloud because it comes with automatic fail-over and an enterprise-level security options. More Businesses Adopting Private Clouds: Security and compliance are the two main factors that are causing more businesses to adopt the private cloud. As well, they are finding the private cloud a cost-efficient solution when moving a fair number of physical servers to the cloud. View of Security and Compliance an Impediment to Cloud Adoption: Security concerns are still the main reason why some business

If you have website that you are growing, you will soon realize that there will be spikes in server requests. If you do not have the right technology provided by a web host, the results can be slow loading times or even go temporarily offline. For an ecommerce site, this can have a tremendous negative impact as the results can be loss of customers and loss of sales. If your website is experience such problems you may require an upgrade to multiple server. In such a situation, you should consider the benefits of load balancing. Load Balancing The term Load balancing means a method of distributing a server's work load across multiple servers. More than one machine can be connected to make it seem like one virtual server or machines arranged in clusters. Within this technology, there is a router or hardware switch that directs requests among them to reduce load times. Therefore, load balancing is attained by both software or hardware based executions. With Software-based load balancing, the software needs to be installed on the servers in a load-balanced cluster. Hardware-based load balancing makes use of a router or switch that has load balancing software installed on it. Load Balanced Server Advantages Better Scalability: Processing power can be better utilized when load balancing is configured on a server. Requests can be directed to the processors that have the lowest demand which make response time much quicker. As well, there is the ability to prioritize applications so that user interactions are handled with the highest priority. Some servers may be taken offline when demand is low and then brought back online when needed. Improved Performance: Multiple processors can manage a single user request with faster download times for the end user. In addition, with load balancing, an online shopper with a full cart is able to split their load and move through more than one channel to clear the bottleneck much faster. High Availability: Load balancing over multiple servers gives one the ability to

The PCI DSS, created by the founding payment brands of the PCI Security Standards Council, assists organizations with the adoption of consistent global data security measures. The mission is to help organizations proactively protect customer account data. The PCI DSS is a multifaceted security standard that includes requirements for security policies, management, procedures, software design, network architecture, and other vital protective standards. For the second year in a row, Verizon's flagship business-class cloud computing solution, ‘Computing as a Service,’ has passed a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard audit. This means organizations that process credit card transactions can move critical payment applications to the Verizon cloud knowing that the cloud infrastructure they are using is protected by an industry-recognized set of payment-card security standards. Becoming PCI DSS Validated To become PCI DSS-validated, Verizon CaaS' physical and virtual infrastructure went through an all-inclusive third-party assessment of its procedures, policies, and technical systems, as well as an on-site assessment and system wide vulnerability scan. Joseph S. Crawford, executive director, enterprise cloud services of Verizon, said “Compliance with industry standards such as PCI DSS is a competitive differentiator for Verizon in the marketplace. As the adoption of cloud-enabled IT services continues to accelerate, it is essential that we continue to invest in delivering a secure, PCI compliant-ready cloud environment that supports a broader range of business-critical applications." Verizon PCI DSS Compliant Services Verizon offers a broad range of other PCI DSS-compliant services such as credit card processors, transaction services network, and a proprietary data network that gives banks, merchants, and other businesses the ability to quickly receive and process orders. As well, two other Verizon services meet PCI DSS requirements - Verizon's IP application hosting service which is delivered thr

Many of the incredible advancements in science, technology, medicine, computing, locomotion, and the military, have been the result of military research and development. For instance, advancements in aviation, internet, and GPS, were developed through military endeavors and transferred to business for consumer products. Now, the US military is embracing cloud computing. The research division of the Department of Defense (DoD), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has embarked on working with cloud computing to resolve security weaknesses. Their interest is focused on protecting military systems from cyber attacks over the cloud. DARPA wants to heighten network security with a project called Mission-oriented Resilient Clouds (MRC). The DOD is the agency responsible for fighting cyber wars in addition to engaging in traditional means of warfare, and is seeking technology to complete this mission more effectively. Because of the nature of its missions and projects, the DOD wants to ensure that cloud infrastructure is not only secure, but is built to withstand an attack that may take down portions of the network. DARPA issued the following statement: “Cloud computing infrastructures, in particular, tightly integrate large numbers of hosts using high speed interconnection fabrics that can serve to propagate attacks even more rapidly than conventional networked systems. Today’s hosts, of course, are highly vulnerable, but even if the hosts within a cloud are reasonably secure, any residual vulnerability in the hosts will be amplified dramatically. DARPA believes that we must not only address host vulnerabilities but must also pursue clean-slate approaches to the design of networked computations and cloud-computing infrastructures.” Dave Mihelcic, the Defense Information Systems Agency’s CTO said, “This program will support federal CIO Vivek Kundra’s cloud-first policy, which is “accelerating DoD toward cloud computing and shared enterprise service.” The policy of the Federal government says

This year's Cloud Expo which was sponsored by Dell, Abiquo, Oracle and other vendors, had over 7,000 delegates, and over 200 sponsors and exhibits. Products demonstrated included security, cloud storage, analytics, and hardware used to deploy cloud solutions. Below is a list of a few of the most innovative cloud solutions from Cloud Expo 2011: Spoon: Users can sign up for a Spoon account to access files and applications from any location. Spoon allows users to run applications from the cloud with zero-install. Some companies are using Spoon to run legacy apps on Windows 7. .doocuments: Capabilities that .documents service provides include: preventing different recipients from viewing pages, restricting the printing of certain pages in a document, and accessing certification, analytics, etc all via the cloud. As well, the service which is still in beta, adds features to users existing documents for additional security and management. It integrates seamlessly into the main office software suites such as Apple's iWork, Microsoft Office, and Acrobat Reader. K7 Cloud Solutions: The egg NAS uses K7's cloud platform enabling users to share and access files from any location. It is also a USB-based Network-Attached Storage (NAS) drive. TwinStrata CloudArray: This is a cloud storage appliance providing data storage and data protection solutions to businesses. It' is normally use for backups, online remote storage, archives and other business data, including primary storage. FireHost: Provides secure cloud hosting on demand for applications of all sizes. Firehost offers PCI-DSS certified and HIPAA compliant hosting. As well, it provides enterprise-grade protection against hacking, DDoS attacks and other threats. Fusion-io: It is the 'world's first enterprise flash platform.' The company's memory-based computing hardware can boost performance of applications in a data center. Just one of Fusion-io's ioMemory modules, has the performance of 1,000 disk drives and capacity of 100 memory modules. Vyatta:

When you decide to move your business in the cloud, you need to decide what type of cloud you want to store your data on. Before you select your cloud, you should research the benefits of what each cloud offers to ensure you pick the best cloud that meets your enterprise needs. Below is a guide on the different types of clouds available. Public Cloud The public cloud offers an on-demand service where you store your data in a public cloud. This means you use the resources of an off-site cloud provider. Fees are structured on a pay-per use-basis and the software is bundled as pay-per-use. You do not have the start up capital costs such as computer hardware. With a public cloud provider, you will benefit from the cloud provider's support staff and security. There are enterprise cloud providers that offer advanced firewalls, load balancers, and VLAN support, which provides even better security. You will be provided with a ready-to-be deployed cloud with complete reliability and scalability. Private Cloud A private Cloud involves a cloud that is managed and owned by the client and not the cloud provider. The cloud infrastructure is stored in the business data center. Companies will choose a private cloud if they have restrictions that does bot permit them to be on a public cloud. More companies are choosing the private cloud as they have more control over the infrastructure and they like maintaining their data on their own premises. Not only do they like having more control, they also feel they have control over compliance. Costs are a bit higher than a public cloud. The company's IT team will be involved with managing the infrastructure, backup, and security. Costs are usually higher than choosing a public cloud. Hybrid Cloud The hybrid offers internal and external cloud solutions. Companies can choose to maintain store some information in-house, and use public cloud for less important data. Most hybrids use physical database servers and virtual front end servers. Companies with existing larg

Apple recently announced that it is getting involved in Cloud Computing. The name is the Apple iCloud. The development of the icloud has made the cloud computing work for people who do not have to understand its complexities when using it. How the iCloud Works Anyone can connect to the cloud wirelessly when they use such Apple devices as iPhones, desktops, ipod Touches, and iPads. This means that users of these devices will have easy access to their applications, documents, calendars, photos, and email messages as as the device can connect to the cloud. Apple will scan the particular device for music that the user purchased from another store, ripped from a CD, or acquired using another method. When it locates a match in the iTunes catalog, then the song is available on any device that is also connected to the iCloud. If there is no match located, the song will be easily uploaded to the iCloud and made available to all of the user's devices. The user pays $25 each year and will be permitted to perform the process of up to 25,000 songs. Users can also sync music that they have not purchased from iTunes into the iCloud, making it available on any connected device. The effect of this technology is great numbers of people will be using the cloud which will likely change the computing landscape . Benefits of the Apple iCloud. Backups to the iCloud take place every day automatically as long as a device is connected to the Internet. The music users purchase from the iTunes store can be listened to on any device connected to the iCloud. This is a free service. Users can store up to 5G of documents inside the iCloud. When you sign up for iCloud, you automatically get 5GB of free storage. Photos can only remain within the cloud for 30 days. The iCloud is replacing a service Apple named MobileMe, which was largely unused and cost $99 per year. iCloud is seamlessly integrated into users apps, so you can access your content on all your devices

Finding the right hosting plan can be a daunting task due to the seemingly endless choices available. Sometimes people will choose a web hosting plan that will turn out not to be what they wanted or the host provider is providing poor service. It is important to choose the right hosting plan, however, if you currently have a web host provider, there are a number of indicators that will tell you that it is time to change web hosting plans. Poor Performance: Slow loading and numerous periods of downtime is a serious problem if you run an online business. Your web host provider should offer reliability and a high performance web server that has the resources to ensure you maintain optimum up-time. If you constantly have issues with performance, it may be time to change web hosts. Poor Quality Customer Service: The web host provider you choose should provide quality customer service. If you are spending a long tome on hold when contacting customer service or you are treated with disrespect, you may want to change web host providers. The supporter you receive should be immediate and the web host provider should take any issue seriously and work to resolve any problems. Customer service should also be friendly and representatives should have the knowledge to deal with any problem that occurs with the web server. Restrictive Terms and Unusually High Costs: If the terms of your service are so restrictive that you feel you do not have a web host service that allows you to grow your website; you may want to switch hosts. Also, if your fees are unusually high, you may want to check with the provider to find out why. If you are unable to get a fair plan, you may want to change web hosts. It is essential that you read the terms and conditions of your agreement before you buy the plan. It is essential to have a reliable and qualified web host provider when hosting your website. If you are unhappy with your web host provider, it may be time to switch to another web host and plan. It is not in your best interest to

Because there are so many web hosting plans available, it can often be difficult selecting the right plan that you need to manage your websites. When people begin their online endeavors or want a cheap way to host numerous websites, they will often look for the cheapest web hosting plan. However, it is important consider a few factors before you choose a cheap web hosting to make sure this type of hosting meets your needs. Cheap does not always mean Quality There are free web hosting plans and plans offered at as little as about $9.00 per month, When it comes to using one of these types of plans, it is important to be aware that the services and resources they offer may likely not meet your ecommerce needs as they usually offer limited resources such as minimum bandwidth usage as well as limited physical space. Free web hosting or a really cheap hosting service is normally better for personal activities and not running an ecommerce site. In addition, with a free web hosting plan, you will have to host the provider's advertisements. Also, if you are planning to turn your website into a site that receives a high volume of traffic, free hosting will not be sufficient to handle all of the server requests. Limitations of Bandwidth and Disk Space It is important to be aware that cheap hosting comes with resource limitations. For instance, you will be allotted a specific amount of bandwidth and physical space so if you use up the amount your visitors will no longer be able to access your site. Most people who choose a cheap web hosting plan will eventually upgrade to a plan that offers more resources and flexibility. As well, if you plan to integrate videos and MP3s, a lot of graphics on your website, your bandwidth will be quickly used up and your site will go offline. Back up of Data It is essential to back up data to ensure data can be recovered in the event of a disaster. With cheap hosting, storing data in the form of a back-up can be a problem. Cheap web hosts do not usually offer data back-up

An organization created by big IT organizations 8 months ago called, The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) released its first deliverable data center requirements and user-driven cloud usage models for use in RFPs and RFIs. The documents include 8 usage models that tackle what the group believes are the most vital issues involving cloud adoption. The models address security automation, management and policies, and transparency, and standards-compliance. ODCA officials noted that the user-driven cloud usage models and data center requirements are also a guideline, and not a mandate. Andrew Feig, executive director on the technology advisory group with UBS' Global Technology Infrastructure Services, and an ODCA board member, said, “It's a framework to see what's going on, not a 'you have to do it this way. Without that transparency, we can't move forward." According to the ODCA, “The challenge in cloud security is that there's a lack of consistent security delivery and management across enterprise and cloud services. New threats are emerging that target cloud transport, and more than 75% of respondents to a KPMG survey of IT professionals listed security as the chief concern for cloud computing.” ODCA officials said, “The challenge today is a lack of common management between cloud services and providers, and a complex regulatory environment that precludes consistent and uncomplicated management of regulatory compliance.” They cited data from KPMG, “Most IT practitioners cite regulation as a primary obstacle to cloud deployment.” They also noted a”lack of a consistent standard framework for comparison of cloud service features, pricing and performance metrics.” The ODCA is hoping that the adoption of these models will “create a possible $50 billion market in cloud services while saving IT $25 billion in spending over five years.” Marvin Wheeler, chief strategy officer at service provider Terremark, and chairman and secretary of the ODCA said, “Our expectation is that you'll see the acceleration of cloud

Maintaining quality customer service is an essential part of operating a business. It can be difficult operating efficient customer services as there issues that have be effectively managed such as wait lines and providing correct information. It is essential to find ways to improve a customer's experience with your business. There was a time that customer service involved customers calling the call centers where the representatives at the call centers resolved their issues and concerns. The call center reps have access to various databases that they would access to resolve customer inquiries. However, problems have emerged such as long wait times on the phone and calls can take a while as a rep works to resolve the issues such as contacting other departments or transferring a customer to various departments that can handle the customer's specific problem. Today, more businesses are choosing cloud computing as a way to make customer service more efficient and much quicker. Cloud computing, involves managing technical support, applications, and infrastructure from a remote location. Cloud services offer businesses with solutions to better manage customer service. Today, there are cloud providers that offer various customer service applications. By using these applications, businesses will benefit from modernizing their call center abilities. They offer the tools to retrieve customer data, customer contact information, and customer histories all from one location instead of various databases. Reps can get a full view of a customer's profile which will help them provide accurate answers and resolve problems much faster. The result is improved customer satisfaction and increases the likelihood of repeat business. There are cloud host providers that offer business applications that allow them to develop their own customer self-service portals. These self-service portals give customers the ability to log cases if they are having problems with a product or service. They can get updates on their histories, product

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), a semiconductor manufacturer, recently reported the results of a global research study on adoption, attitudes and approaches to cloud computing. AMD surveyed IT decision-makers in public and private sector organizations across Europe, the United States, and the Asia-Pacific. The results of the study showed regional and global trends in cloud computing adoption and usage, and emphasized the importance of both workloads and infrastructure when considering cloud computing. AMD Survey Results The survey found that “70% of respondents indicated that they are either using or currently investigating cloud computing for remotely hosted applications or to store data. 60% reported that they are already seeing business value in deploying cloud solutions. Among current cloud users, 92 percent said that infrastructure was an important part of their decision to move to a cloud computing model. 63% of those using the cloud to host data estimated they store more than $250,000 worth of data in the cloud.” Conclusions about the AMD Survey The value of the data residing in the cloud is increasing as cloud adoption continues to increase. Experts say that by assessing the survey, it can be estimated that billions of dollars in active data currently live in the cloud. Patrick Patla, general manager and vice president of AMD’s server and embedded divisions said, "Based on the findings of this global study, AMD believes it is time for the industry to reshape the way we think about cloud technology. The findings point to the fact that while the era of cloud computing has arrived, there are radically different attitudes, approaches, concerns and levels of maturity depending on business environment.” Respondents View of the Cloud “92% of respondents that currently use the cloud stated that infrastructure was important in their decision to adopt cloud computing. Global private sector respondents also identified the workloads they believe most suited potentially for cloud computing as email, f