Hello,

You'll notice slight changes to the layout, yet again, based on your feedback.

Building on the cloud computing overview I wrote about last time, today I'll show you a simple way to get around the problem of wide area communication lag when your server is at a datacenter and users are several hundred miles away at the office.

Lag can be a significant issue in migrating to cloud computing or hosted server, especially if the server hosts your line of business applications that are used on a daily basis. Trust me, you do not want users to click on something and wait for the screen to be updated while the data travels over the wire from datacenter to the users location.

We work around this lag problem by moving the workstation into the cloud as well. What this does is give your applications a high speed connection to the data that resides on the server locally at the datacenter, the only thing that is sent over the wire is keystrokes and screen updates.

This type of setup works really well, it not only solves the lag issue but also provides you higher security as only thing travelling on the wire is keystrokes and screenshots instead of real data. Another side effect to a setup like this is your users become more mobile as they can access their desktops from anyplace where there is an internet connection available and from a variety of devices like mobiles phones or tablets including internet kiosks at hotels.

The icing on the cake is, with such a setup, you do not have to invest in powerful desktop machines anymore, actually you can simply use Windows terminals that have a much longer life span compared to PCs and are more reliable as they don't have any moving parts.