Lightweight Models and Cost Effective Scalability

Businesses migrate from ad hoc Web 2.0 use toward more formal approaches, welcoming O’Reilly’s “small is the new big” adage with open arms, it’s essential to deliver not just technologically but to adapt corporate models for more scalable and cost-effective change. 

Not everyone knows or heard about cloud storage. 

But some people, who knew about it, think that it’s an awesome idea to have everything in the cloud, but some think that it’s nothing special, unsafe or no security. Cloud Storage in the beginning isn’t supported by many industries, as they think it’s expensive and not workable or profitable at all.

As time goes by technology have changed and so does the thinking of the people using it. I would love to share with you a great example, Amazon Cloud Drive which allows you to upload your documents in the cloud, but that’s not all it have one unique features known as cloud player, which allows you to play your music, video and photos on the Web. It’s not like a Dropbox that allows you to store your files. Below there will be a video to explain how Amazon Cloud Drive works.

 

The promise of a product like Amazon's Cloud Drive is that you can upload all of the precious media files from all of your computers and devices (home, work, phone) to one common place, so that you're never stranded without access to your digital media.

Aside from Amazon's handy cross-platform uploader and downloader utilities and its browser-based tools for viewing, downloading, and streaming your stuff, Amazon is also throwing in a Cloud Player feature within the Amazon MP3 application for Android. Using the free app, you can stream all the music you have stored in the cloud, or download your tracks on the fly for offline playback.

Amazon is brilliant, in the sense that it has its existing businesses like it’s Online Departmental Store, Instant Video – which allows online movie rental and purchase, MP3 Music store, and cloud services. Now with the Cloud Drive, it’s combining almost everything of its existing business into one. They know that cloud storage is going to be big someday, and they took the first step in releasing it before anyone does. Although from my point of view, I think that Apple’s upcoming release on its cloud services know as iCloud might be a its biggest challenger. With the existing businesses of Amazon, to them its lighter on the cost to create Cloud Drives, and in order to attract more users, all it existing customers will be granted 5GB of storage spaces and they also welcoming new users too. Comparing to Dropbox only offering 2GB of storage and does not pack with additional features like Cloud Player.  

In conclusion, I think that Amazon Cloud Drive will be a big hit, and its true that everything is going to be all about web. Google Chromebook (video link below to let you know more) is the best example on how the WEB is going to dominate the IT industry, where there won’t be any OS, won’t be any programs, it’s going to be just the WEB. So Amazon, Google and Apple is seeing the big picture here, making everything live online or real-time. 

References

Cloud Storage Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_storage

Amazon Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com

About Amazon Cloud Drive:

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/learnmore

Dropbox Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_(service)

YouTube of Amazon Cloud Drive Intro:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkQ55Iij-1M 

Android Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)

Amazon Online Departmental Store:

http://www.amazon.com/

Amazon Instant Video:

http://www.amazon.com/Instant-Video/b/ref=sa_menu_aiv_vid0?ie=UTF8&node=16261631

Amazon MP3 Music store:

http://www.amazon.com/MP3-Music-Download/b/ref=sa_menu_mp3_str1?ie=UTF8&node=163856011

Apple Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.

iCloud Information:

http://www.cloudme.com/en , http://www.cloudme.com/en/get-to-know

Google Chromebook Features:

http://www.google.com/chromebook/#features

Youtube Video on Google Chromebook:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVqe8ieqz10

Data is the next 'Intel Inside'

Every day, consumers from all over the globe are uploading, transferring and downloading valuable data online. Web 2.0 has become a vastly growing global resource for people to connect with each other and gain instantaneous information. 

The following might be some of the best examples of what everyone in the world who are using the power data in Web 2.0 environment: 

Microsoft’s collaboration software, Sharepoint, which in its early days was a simple document sharing tool, is now chockfull of social networking features, including tools to support blogs, wikis, and a robust interactive community. It’s free version, Windows SharePoint Services, which comes with Windows, you can do BI, reporting, and integration, and it’s an entire application development platform as well. 

Google Docs can easily do all the basics, including making bulleted lists, sorting by columns, adding tables, images, comments, formulas, changing fonts and more. They have successfully creating wonders in the generation of mobile smartphone and tablets industry too, allowing google users to work and collaborate on mobile seamlessly. If you want to work and share docs within the team, now every team members can view and make changes at the same time. There’s an on-screen chat window for spreadsheets, and document revisions show you exactly who changed what, and when. We can also add in more details or comments.

Users love the tool because it consolidates information from many applications, and loves it because it’s a single technology they can use for many purposes.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) keeps growing and growing and growing, experts and analysts say, with many large companies adding SaaS components to on-premise software installations. Salesforce.com, considered the bellwether of the SaaS industry, reported record revenue of $305 million, up 23% from 2008, in its fiscal first quarter ended April 30, 2009. SaaS is winning favor because it’s often 20% cheaper than managing a non-premise application. SaaS is on track to be the dominant model for software by 2012. There are still lots of security issues, but the economics are definitely there. The other sweeping advantage is the flexibility that companies gain by rapidly adding new functionality. The paradigm shift is where you can go acquire a piece of what you need and assemble that into the software that you already own.

The Next Big Thing, Cloud Computing. 

It’s only a matter of time before cloud computing gains its place on center stage. Sure, there are still security and reliability issues, but what aspect of IT doesn’t have that today?

Cloud services, offered by tech giants such as

• Amazon
• Microsoft
• Salesforce

They are making it relatively painless and certainly cheaper for a company to add infrastructure than if they were doing it themselves. They also gain best practices from the cloud provider. If the company decides it doesn’t need that extra infrastructure in six or 12 months, it simply cancels the service. That’s why enterprise customers are now doing cloud computing pilots, whereas a year ago, CIOs were turning up their noses at the concept.

One of the famous service that everyone is using right now is Dropbox. 

Its one the most amazing thing for users, as they can upload whatever files they wanted in the cloud and then retrieving it in almost every mobile devices. Watch the video below understand more about the goodness of Dropbox. 

Next will be the Microblogging. 

Using social networking sites to broadcast news and other information about your company is a pretty darn cheap and widely acceptable way to engage with your community of partners, customers, and prospects. From the IT management side, there’s not much to do and why not educate your executives about the social Web?

“It’s virtually free, except for the labor involved, and you have unprecedented reach into decision makers,” says Jonathan Jaffe, founder of its-your-internet.com, a New York City-based company that advises organizations on technologies for online marketing.

This will change because as more people use Twitter these individuals will get bombarded, but now there’s a lot of accessibility. IT people are also broadcasting technical problems to the social Web and sometimes getting answers within an hour or two from vendors and experts.

Internal social networking using by the companies are best off starting internally when experimenting with social media. For one thing, it’s better to make a mistake inside the company than with customers and influencers. For another, employees increasingly prefer to communicate via social media, and now, enterprise social networking tools incorporate security and other requirements that big companies seek. Leading Web-based applications for internal blogs, micro-blogging, mashups, and wikis include Confluence by Atlassian, Socialtext, and the open-source MediaWiki. Such tools are often available at a fraction of the cost of traditional collaboration products (from companies such as Microsoft and IBM).

In Conclusion, IT pros should stay close to the people who hold the purse when they are looking into new applications and projects, as always.

“From my point of view, having developed Web applications for the past 13 years, a key issue I’ve seen everywhere is the communication gap between the financial controller (FC) of the company and the development team members. So my advice is don’t focus too much on the buzzwords. Get in synch with your FC and look at your projects from a business point of view.” Dan Bridge, a UK-based developer

Reference

Sharepoint information: 

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/default.aspx 
Google Docs screenshots on an iPad and information: 
docs.google.com/
Youtube video of "What is DropBox?": 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFb0NaeRmdg
Cloud Services: 
Amazon: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/
Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/
Salesforce: http://www.salesforce.com/cloudcomputing/
Wikipedia information: 
SaaS : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service
Cloud Computing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
Microblogging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging
Dropbox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_(service)
Quote by Jonathan Jaffe :
http://www.its-your-internet.com/index.php/about-us/founder-jonathan-jaffe.html