Hello,

I've tweaked the layout of the newsletter a bit, let me know what you think!

Today is about cloud computing and how it is helping small business succeed in the new, more competitive world.

Cloud computing really means any form of internet based computing. You can have an internal cloud (cluster of compute resources in your computer room), external cloud (rented compute resources at a third party) or any combination either of.

When I think cloud computing, I assume having highly scalable infrastructure. A setup where resources dynamically expand and contract depending on demand. This dynamic resource allocation is key to scalability and cost. Costs are lowered as during slow periods resources are taken offline while additional load does not cause any contention as additional compute nodes are spun up to accommodate surge in usage.

Companies are using internal clouds combined with entities like the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud to lower costs and at the same time improve customer satisfaction and employee productivity.

Some companies do this so well, that their entire business model is based on cloud computing. For example, Smugmug spins off additional compute nodes in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud to transcode video that is uploaded for storage. PCSN's own backup service uses Amazon S3 as backend storage, providing low cost highly reliable managed backup for disaster recovery for small business. You will see Amazon mentioned a lot when you hear cloud computing, this is because Amazon pioneered the pay as you go model in computing, really billing like the electric company bills you.

PCSN has helped companies extend their computing infrastructure to Amazon. if you need a machine for a specific time period but don't want to own it permanently, we can spin it up at Amazon where you only pay for the amount of time you run the machine, just like what Smugmug does. Once the data is massaged and processed the way you want it, it is then transferred to your internal infrastructure and the resources at Amazon disappear.