Cloud computing offers great promise and is the current buzz in the IT world but it doesn't work for everyone.  Do your research before you invest!

Many of the applications that our clients use will not work with the cloud computing structure due to bandwidth.  If your servers are located in your office, you have at least 100 Mgit/s of connectivity.  Often your server has at least 1,000 Mbit/s of bandwidth to share between users on your network.  If you switch to cloud computing you have significantly less.  This is fine for most applications but you will still get some complaints from users that are editing video or opening large CAD files.

When files are stored in the public cloud on virtual servers, you are limited to the speed of your Internet connection.  A single T1 connection only has 1.4 Mbit/s of connectivity that everyone shares.  This is fine for web sites, web based applications and things like email that can download in the back ground but it will not work for CAD files, and applications such as QuickBooks.  Users will be unhappy opening large spreadsheets or graphics files.  For these types of applications to work you will need a very high speed fiber connection or you will need to move to virtual desktops that are hosted in the same network as the virtual servers or services.  Once we can all get 1,000 Mbit/s connections I think the majority of IT services will be delivered from the cloud but that will not be for several years to come.

Sam Lucas
Carolina Computer Partners
704-549-0125
843-414-5868
www.ccpteam.com