Why Cloud is now at the companies top priorities?

In the most difficult economic climate in decades, companies are reevaluating their strategies and looking for new ways to reduce data center costs and overhead while improving responsiveness to business requirements. Cloud computing has emerged as a much more agile and efficient approach than what companies have done in the past: adding more compute, storage and networking capacity or trying to get more out of what they already own.

Cloud computing did not emerge from a vacuum, but has its origins in three technology trends that most companies are already familiar with. These developments were all born out of the same need -- to drive down costs, simplify data center operations and allow IT to be as agile as possible. As these trends have become pervasive, they've helped put the cloud at the top of the priorities.

Data consolidation: Consolidating sprawling data centers has become a top IT priority as companies struggle with out-of-control costs for hardware, power, administration and service. Many companies have seen their data centers grow beyond anything they ever anticipated, with the result that in many cases they're not only running out of space, they're increasingly running out of power and cooling as well. In response, they look for innovative ways to reduce their data center footprints - to move out anything that adds cost and complexity, and takes up extra real estate.

Growth of virtualization: Many organizations now operate in virtualized environments, where applications can be quickly deployed to available resources, rather than assigning them to a specific physical machine. Not only does this optimize utilization of equipment, it allows IT to become much more responsive to the needs of the business.

Emergence of SaaS: The Software as a Service (SaaS) model has become widely accepted, in which applications are hosted by outside service providers that can apply specialized expertise, the right hardware and economies of scale. The idea of running certain apps outside the walls of the organization is recognized as not only acceptable but often preferable, where an external provider delivers the service just as well (if not better) than companies trying to do it themselves.

Cloud computing builds on these trends, and goes several steps further, providing new capabilities for enterprise computing:

• Not just consolidating the data center, but creating the optimum environment both within the data center and in the external cloud, to match changing demands for computing resources

• Not just virtualizing applications across internal systems, but across whatever environment is most appropriate and cost effective

• Not just software as a service, but enterprise applications running in the cloud on the cloud provider's infrastructure

The ability to run applications in the cloud promises to radically alter the balance sheet by which IT projects are judged, where initial capital expense and ongoing operating costs are factored against value delivered and how quickly resources become available. Companies now have the opportunity to do something much more significant than make small incremental improvements -- particularly as new cloud deployment and management tools come to market. That's why more and more IT executives are making cloud computing a top priority as they plan their strategies for 2010 and beyond.

What is cloud computing?

Every business bigger than one person needs somewhere to store its data and run its business applications and communications, including email. A generation of businesses has installed a server — or many servers in a data centre — and hired specialist IT staff to run it.

With cloud computing, you instead rent capacity in a provider’s data center, and connect over the internet. The provider’s staff install, maintain and upgrade hardware and software as required. Typically you’ll rent a service, such as data storage or email or accounting, rather than ‘a server’ as such, and pay per user or per business per month.

Why is it called cloud computing?
Network diagrams have traditionally used a cloud symbol to denote ‘the internet’ or, before that, the telephone network outside the customer’s zone of responsibility.

What services are on offer?
You name it. Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Windows Hotmail are email in the cloud. In the lucrative business productivity market, Google Docs and Google Apps compete directly with Microsoft Office and Exchange — the latter now ‘in the cloud’ as Microsoft Online Services.
Accounting, customer relationship management (CRM), project management, email marketing, spam and virus filtering, data storage, ecommerce, online publishing, audio and video streaming, general databases — all available in the cloud.

Why use cloud computing?
Potentially cloud services are cheaper and more flexible. Because they’re internet-based, you can access them from anywhere — often including mobile devices.
Most servers and internet links lie idle most of the time. Cloud providers host many businesses on a pool of hardware, sharing the cost of servers, electricity, data links, backup systems, IT staff and even real estate. A cloud provider can quickly add extra capacity or scale it back again when you need it. Capital expenditure on servers and up-front software licenses, and the unpredictable costs of dealing with emergencies, are replaced by a predictable operational cost.

Can it really cut IT costs by 80%?
That’s hype. Hardware and internet costs are dropping, sure, but supporting end users is still a significant cost. Moving to the cloud removes the cost of maintaining your own systems, but you still need to configure the generic cloud-based service to match your business’ unique needs, train your staff and help them find lost spreadsheets.

Is there a downside?
You become dependent on your cloud providers. If there’s no easy way to extract your data in a usable format, your business success is now intertwined with theirs. There may also be legal and privacy issues: will your data become subject to the privacy and data retention laws of another country; will you still be compliant with your industry requirements in Australia?

Is it secure?
Big cloud providers like Microsoft and Google have some of the best security staff on the planet. Their backup procedures are likely to be better than yours too. (Where are your business data backups right now?) However big cloud providers do represent an attractive target to hackers — if they can break in.

Is cloud computing “radically new”?
Not everyone thinks it’s that big a change. It’s more evolution than revolution. “Cloud computing is not only the future of computing, it is the present, and the entire past of computing is all cloud,” said Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle Corporation and the world’s sixth richest man, in a passionately entertaining rant last year. “It’s not water vapor. All it is is a computer attached to a network. What are you talking about? I mean, what do you think Google runs on?” As Ellison points out, CRM provider Salesforce.com has been running more than a decade.

In many ways cloud computing is indeed just the current buzzword for what has also been called utility computing, grid computing, software as a service (SaaS), IBM’s ‘On Demand’ branded services, the application service provider (ASP) model, or even good ol’ mainframe timesharing.

Improving Ranking: The Title Tag

With 2009 rapidly coming to a close, it’s time to start making plans for 2010. And what better way to do that than to talk about upcoming trends in Search Engine Optimization.

In the past, I’ve talked about how important it is for each Web page to have a unique, keyword-rich title to display on a search engine results page. That advice is still relevant, and will continue to be so in 2010. But I’m not talking about the “Title Meta Tag” that displays at the very top of your web browser. I’m talking about a different “Title Tag.”  This one contains text that pops up in a box when your mouse hovers over a particular word or image on a Web page.

This Title Tag gives you the opportunity to add a fuller, keyword-rich description of the image or word the title refers to.  Remember, the search engine spiders are pretty savvy.  They want to see unique content. So don’t repeat the same keywords in your title tag. Use slightly different words that still contain the meaning you want to get across to your visitor.

If you’re planning on revamping your Web site in the new year, keep title tags in mind. They can be a useful tool to enhance your search engine rankings!

Facebook Fan Page: A Cost Effective Tool for Your Business

Facebook’s growth as a social network has been phenomenal this year. 300 million active users and counting. But it’s not just individuals any more. More and more businesses have hopped on the Facebook bandwagon and are setting up Fan Pages.


Before you hop aboard, think about what you want to accomplish as a business owner. If you’re intention is to network with executives in certain target industries, you might want to consider using LinkedIn instead.


But if you want to reach out to potential customers, find out what they’re interested in, cultivate relationships, and best of all, not pay a dime to do it, then you should consider creating a Facebook fan page for your company. It’s not a hard process to get a fan page set up. You just need to select a category:

• Local
• Brand, Product or organization
• Artist, Band or Public Figure

Then, you need to give your page a name.  After that, it’s a matter of customizing it, as you would do with your own personal page.  You can provide links to your Website, include images, and background information about your company.

Now, you can start interacting with your audience. Start by inviting your current contacts to become fans. Then, start to conduct surveys, share important updates, hold contests, promote events you’re attending and include helpful resources.

The more useful information you provide, the more likely it will be that your fans will return, interact with you, and maybe even suggest your fan page to their connections. Don’t forget to take advantage of Facebox’s Fan Box widget either.  You can place this icon on your own Website to gain more fans and share your Facebook updates.

Remember – be careful what you post. Facebook frowns on spamming, Make sure you follow the social network’s Write-up on Warnings and Terms and Conditions.  You don’t want to accidentially misuse the site and have your content removed, or worse, your account disabled.

You might find it daunting trying to find the time to manage your Facebook fan page.  There are two ways to go about this. You can  dedicate 30 minutes a day to monitoring the page yourself or hire an administrator to review the site, and post new content to it.  As with any marketing strategy, the key to making your Facebook fan page successful is to be consistent.

Optimizing Websites: A Necessity

It still amazes me when I come across a marketing company that designs websites, but doesn’t optimize them for the search engines.


What is the point of designing a website that looks attractive and has excellent content describing a company’s product or service? Don’t you want to market your business to the widest possible audience?  I guess, if your business is making a ton of money already, you don’t have to. But how many companies can honestly say they’re in a position to turn away business, especially in this economy?

When you fail to optimize your site for the search engines, your company’s marketing department (or you, the owner, if you have a small business) will have to work that much harder to get the word out. Not to mention, why invest your hard-earned money on a website if you’re not going to maximize its potential?  Talk about squandering your ROI.
If you don’t optimize your website, there are only a few ways someone can find your website online:

• You get the website’s URL directly from someone at the company.
• You link to it from another company’s website.
• You link to it from a social media platform such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

Maybe that’s why some companies feel they don’t need to spend the money on optimizing their website. They think they can get the word out through social media. And they may be right, to an extent.  But optimizing your website doesn’t have to cost a fortune. In fact, you can find plenty of tips online to do this yourself.  At the very least, you should come up with unique, keyword-rich titles and descriptions for your web pages.  You don’t have to worry about coming up with a list of keywords for the meta tag, since the major search engines don’t use them anymore.


But if you don’t have the time or the inclination, hire someone to do it for you. If your web designer isn’t proficient, find an SEO specialist or ask your friends for a referral!

Why “Home” has no place as a website title

How many times have you searched on Google and found a listing where the title only said “Home Page” or “Home”? You have to look below the title to the description to discover the company’s name and/or its business. Why does this happen?

Most likely, it’s a lack of knowledge, time and/or money.
Companies that use “Home” or “Home Page” as the only title for their main landing page may not realize they are limiting their ability to attract new customers.
These firms may not have the budget to hire a web designer and/or a copywriter proficient in search engine optimization who would explain why it’s vital to have keywords in a title.
An SEO copywriter knows that web page titles and descriptions must contain keywords that people use to search for a particular product or service in order to attract the search engines and potential customers.

Some companies try to save money by creating their own sites, using a simple template provided by a website hosting company. But that decision may wind up costing them money, because the failure to include keywords means potential customers may not be able to find their site on Google.
A company that relies on “home page” for its title doesn’t provide any clues about its business. Someone searching online must rely on the description that is displayed on the search engine results page (SERP). But if there are no keywords in the description either, the chances of a site appearing among the first ten or even 20 listings are slim to none.

A few hosting companies won’t let you eliminate the word “Home” from the website’s title. But don’t let that stop you from adding keywords in a short description following the word “home.” If you can’t figure out how do it yourself, ask your hosting company’s technical support group to make the changes for you. And if they won’t do it, find someone else who will.

“Home” may be where the heart is, but your potential customers won’t go there, unless you give them a keyword to show the way.

Welcome or Not Welcome?

Putting “Welcome to (your) Company” on your website may have worked when the Internet was new, but that strategy can cost you sales and search engine rankings today. There’s a better way to attract customers: write benefit-oriented content.

There are millions of websites competing for attention. People are too busy to spend a lot of time reading content. They want to know right away if your site is going to help them.
Instead of literally “welcoming” people to your site – get right to the point, with content that convinces a visitor to stick around, explore your site, and do business with you. Make sure you’ve got a headline that clearly communicates the benefits your product or service offers to a potential customer. You’ve only got about 3-5 seconds to make an impression. Use words that count!
Some companies still put “Welcome” in their title tags as well. This won’t help you with search engine optimization. In fact, it may do the opposite.

Search engines are looking for content. Your title tag should provide specific information about what your company does, with keywords people use to search for your business. And you only have a limited number of characters to get that point across. If your title is too long, the search engines cut it off and replace the extra words with an ellipsis. If you want to communicate more information about your business, use the description meta tag instead.

Welcoming visitors to your site may be polite, but it’s just not necessary. Use your precious title tag and landing page space for clear, concise, benefit-oriented copy. That’s the way to ensure good search engine rankings and higher conversion rates.