The five aspects Schmidt suggests considering before embracing cloud computing are outages, speed, privacy/security, compatibility, and switching platforms. The one that I would like to focus on is outages. Outages happen, it’s undeniable, so businesses should be prepared. “If there isn’t an alternative to a cloud feature, that should sound some alarms.” Earlier in the year, when Amazon’s EC2 went out, the companies that survived the short outage were ones that had backup servers in place. A main fear that I hear continually brought up about moving to the cloud is the possibility of outages, and from what we have all learned from the past is that the cloud will work smoothly as long as you plan accordingly.

• 5 Things to Consider Before Embracing Cloud Computing

To piggyback off of last week’s Cloudup in which we touched on the predicted growth of SaaS and IaaS, this article states that “enterprise spending on the public cloud is due to grow by 139 per cent between 2010 and 2011.” This was calculated by studying the positive trends recorded in IT expenditure such as “cloud computing, wireless, wireline voice, IP communications and wireline data.”

• Cloud Computing Spending Predicted to Rise

The idea that cloud computing is a new way of going green is not new; we’ve posted a lot of articles about this in the past. This article, unlike the ones in the past, puts a number to this idea. Verdantix’s report “estimates that cloud computing could enable companies to save $12.3 billion off their energy bills.” $12.3 billion also means 85.7 million metric tons of carbon emissions will be saved as well by 2020. If 12 billion dollars isn’t enough to persuade your company to make the swift, I don’t know what will.

• Cloud Computing Could Lead to Billions in Energy Savings

Cloud computing could be very beneficial for SMBs, but unfortunately, a recent Zoomerang survey found that many small and medium-sized business owners are confused on what “the cloud” means and what the technology could mean to them. 47% of the SMBs studied said they were not familiar with the technology, and 25% said they don’t know what it means. To set the record straight, cloud computing for SMBs means not having to deal with physical infrastructures like file and email servers, storage systems, or actual, physical software. “This means less time and money is spent on managing the technology,” as well as provides SMBs with “anywhere, anytime” accessibility to these solutions. Cloud computing means less hassle, less spending, and frees up their time so it can be spent on what really matters to their business.

• The Growing Cloud Computing Market for SMBs

Make sure to check out this ebiz forum on how cloud computing should evolve. Some responses so far claim that the cloud should become more user-friendly and easier to understand, while others say that the cloud does not necessarily need to evolve, per-se, but that it will just by default evolve. What are your takes on this discussion? Add your input through the link below.

• How Should Cloud Computing Evolve?

Citrix Systems Inc. acquired Cloud.com on Tuesday for a rumored price of $200-250 million. “The acquisition will let Citrix customers run cloud-computing software faster and more cheaply.” GoDaddy.com, Zynga, and Nokia are all Cloud.com customers that rely on the service to run their website in the cloud and handle their traffic. This acquisition puts Citrix into closer competition with VMware and Amazon.com, which also host websites on their cloud platforms.

• Citrix Systems Acquires Cloud.com to Challenge Rivals VMware, Amazon

The four reasons Casey outlines as to why the cloud is not overhyped are geography, faster deployment speeds, room for growth, and frequency of updates and enhancements. Geography because companies with offices all over the state, country, world, what have you, can access the same data at the same time, without the fear that something problematic would happen to a single data center. Faster deployment speeds and room for growth are important because as businessues such as the Schumacher Group grow rapidly, the cloud services can be set up quickly, keep up with growth, and maintain high speeds better than an on-site server would. And finally, the frequency of updates and enhancements allows for more growth and simple updates without hassle.

• 4 Reasons Cloud Computing Isn’t Overhyped

According to new In-Stat research, public cloud computing “is set to grow “153% from 2010 to 2015.” IaaS is predicted to grow to about $4 billion by 2015, SaaS will grow 142%. In addition, small businesses are expected to be the fastest growing size segment, “growing from $2.5 billion by 2010 and $6.6 billion by 2015.” SaaS and IaaS are important to small businesses because of the ease of use, the accessibility, and the cost savings they provide.

• Public Cloud Computing is Set to Grow 153% From 2010 to 2015

Cloud services “can and will fail at some point,” there is no reason to deny it. However, to ensure that business runs smoothly during these times, businesses must fully understand what possible problems could arise and find out how to solve them if the event occurs. If an organization is experiencing performance problems, consider Cloudsleuth, “an open online cloud community sponsored by Compuware,” which helps uncover and solve performance problems. If companies do experience slower response times or lower network bandwidth, they should try to uncover the issue before it turns into something even larger, such as the service shutting down completely. Do not let these types of problems discourage you from joining the cloud. Just like IT services, problems will arise, but learn how to fix them and have an alternative plan prepared, and the downtime will go smoothly.

• What to Do When the Cloud Fails

VMware announced their new version of vSphere cloud operating system on Tuesday. The new upgrade is “aimed at making it easier for small and medium sized businesses to adopt cloud computing.” The upgrade included better security, storage, and recovery features. New storage features allows for companies to “pool internal storage from several computers into one secure pool” without needing to purchase additional services or hardware. VMwares announcement was juxtaposed with Citrix’s acquisition of Cloud.com, which puts the two companies in bigger competition with the other.

• VMware Expands Cloud Suite, Boosts Storage Abilities

Last week Intuit and Salesforce announced that they would be teaming up together. However, details of the pairing are not clear. In this article, Howlett brings forth some of these issues, such as whether or not Quickbooks will be a tab on salesforce.com or a separate application, whether this is globally available or restricted to the US, and asks why salesforce.com has not announced this pairing, only Intuit.

Earlier this week, Appirio launched CloudSpokes, a crowdsourcing development community that allows companies to connect to cloud experts in their area. “CloudSpokes will create transparency for the market around cloud platforms and cloud development,” as customers and consumer connect for project execution. As the cloud continues to grow, resources such as this will grow in demand.

• Cloud Meet Crowd- A Match Made for the Enterprise
  

The Federal Government has began taking advantage of the cloud with their launch of the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy. The government can now consolidate data, making it easier to navigate and quicker to get to, as well as “reduce [their] data center infrastructure expenditure by approximately 30%,” up to $20 million, which could be spent on new cloud technologies. Every week, companies are switching over to the cloud, and the Government’s shift is just the beginning.

• Federal Cloud Computing Strategy Officially Launched

In the Public Cloud, PaaS has become somewhat of a middle ground between SaaS and IaaS. PaaS combines the positive qualities of SaaS, such as low costs and customization options, and the positive qualities of IaaS, such as efficiency and high amount of data storage. “As these capabilities become more sophisticated and their complexity increases, the drive to abstract and re-simplify pushes IaaS toward PaaS.” Ultimately, PaaS is advancing quicker than SaaS and IaaS, and will continue to do so.

• IaaS and SaaS Lead to PaaS

2010 was the year where everyone shifted towards the cloud, and 2011 will be the year everyone understands how to use it. Urquhart believes that cloud applications will greatly impact companies in three ways: making data and analytics faster and easier to swift through, allowing companies to more easily try out new business ideas without investing too much money, and by allowing companies to back up their data via context systems.

• Cloud Computing’s Killer Applications

With large corporations such as Google and Facebook hiring immense amounts of engineers, combined with an increasing number of US graduates pursing jobs oversees, a shortage of good engineers is underway. Which is why, Reddy suggests, graduates should look into working at a startup company. “The downside risk is relatively low. With lots of venture capital funding, salaries and benefits at startups are competitive to those at large companies.” Startups give engineers the opportunity to do what they actually love doing, as opposed to the bureaucracies of a larger corporation. At this point, we would like to give ourselves and other startups, a firm pat on the back.

• Why Engineers Are Better Off Joining Startups