With the onslaught of recession around the world, it is but a small wonder that small and medium business are searching for ways to minimize expenses while maximizing resources. But there is an answer to this ongoing call of business owners around the world. Salesforce.com will launch Sites, where companies can bring their applications and can host their websites in just one platform. Creating your own infrastructure is history in Sites.
Since Salesforce.com harbors Software-as-a-service (SaaS), it is a pay-per-use system. Businesses no longer need to worry about yearly towering expenses that they could not fully utilize. Force.com also minimizes the management and maintenance resposibilities of the companies since they no longer have to buy their own servers and host the data since they can utilize the datacenters of Salesforce.com. Companies can run their Web sites and intranet using this platform. Employees, clients and target cusotmers can access your site with Force.com.
Force.com Tutorial
Your current applications can be easily deployed into public websites since Force.com uses Visualforce. User authentication is not required when integrating your applications to your website. You can also increase site performance through cache control.
The expansion of Salesforce.com will reach out and help the market of big and small providers. A company’s whole web may be run in Salesforce.com’s cloud. Furthermore, there are many choices of enterprise applications for those who sign up for this service.
Utilizing cloud services is one way in improving your company’s business. The World Wide Web delivers a lot of services to both business and consumer that makes it very dependable to use. The popularity of using cloud services has increased over the years, mainly due to the fact that it is flexible, reliable, easily accessible, extensive and affordable.
Cloud Computing and Sevices can be pretty confusing for a first timer, so let us enumerate some of the options of Cloud Computing. Let us also include the most popular companies offering the respective services (although these companies are not limited to providing the specified service).
* Software as a Service (SaaS) is an option where instead of expecting the user to install the application software, the user is able to access it through the internet. It is a centralized form of service. A popular provider is Salesforce.com.
* Platform as a Service (PaaS) is much like SaaS, although the user has given more control of his application. It provides complete support for the building and execution of the application. Known Providers are 10gen and Google AppEngine.
* Tool as a Service (TaaS) offers online tools needed by users, while guiding them about its usage. An example is Amazon’s Simple DB, which helps users in the indexing of data to simplify its storage and access
* Hardware as a Service (HaaS) may work as licensing for managing services, while can also be a vendor for pay-per-use. Such is Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
Service providers offer guidelines, procedures and even hands-on help especially for first timers. Those who would opt for these services are guaranteed to have a satisftying experience.
Last December 11, 2008, IBM launched the latest cloud service web conferencing: the new version of Lotus Sametime Unyte. Together with InterCall, IBM commenced the service that aims to meet the demands for online collaboration. Lotus Sametime Unyte is a reliable and reasonably priced service that is user friendly. Businesses from around the world can utilize this service that will help them not only minimize costs due to travel expenses but also be environment friendly.
WebDialogs now available for Lotus Sametime Unyte
IBM is proud to deliver that this service can easily be accessed at an affordable price. Furthermore, Lotus Sametime Unyte now supports nine different languages which include French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese and English.
Lotus Sametime Unyte Sharing
Anyone can easily join and participate in Web conferencing with just a click of a button since Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime are already integrated. Uploading of files, presentations and visual demonstrations are handy. Key persons and clients can be included and invited in your online conference without so much hassle.
Looking for dependable storage for your Amazon EC2 instance? You wouldn’t need to look further; Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) can save your day. Amazon EBS provides volume storage for Amazon instances and can serve as device as well.
How does it work? Amazon EBS volumes can be created with sizes ranging from 1 GB to 1 TB and attached to running Amazon instances. It will then appear as a device just like hard drives, and would also work as such, including installing applications and the likes. Furthermore, a single instance can have several volumes attached to it to enhance I/O and throughput performance.
These Amazon EBS volumes are created within a specific Availability zone and can be attached to instances within that same zone. Data loss due to malfunction of one component are prevented since these storage volumes are duplicated also within its specific Availability Zone. On top of that, EBS is able to make snapshots of volumes for protecting data for long-term resilience.
You need not worry about mounting costs since the Amazon EBS is a pay-per-use feature. It is priced at the rate of $ 0.10 per allotted GB per month plus $ 0.10 per 1 million I/O requests for your volume.
Amazon EBS is suitable for your applications requiring connection to raw block level storage or file systems. It is a reliable and durable storage volume for running your Amazon instance.
IBM initiated “Bluehouse”, an online cooperation that aims to help businesses of all types to work with each other through a secure network connection. This will be a venue for entities to host and paricipate in various activities by means of the cloud using a Web browser. Anyone can access and use”Bluehouse”. Small and medium businesses can use this to their advantage, being easily accessible and secure. They can contact and collaborate with other entities such as experts, customers and other businesses. Furthermore, the cost and maintenance of this Software-as-a-Service platform is minimal.
Features of Bluehouse:
- Share documents and files
- Launch and collaborate in joint project activities
- Initiate online meetings
- Create social networking communities
- Connect with customers and other contacts outside the firewall
- secure
Plus, online meetings have several benefits including availability of online files and presentations, several browsers can be opened, web conferencing is safe and secure. Most of all anyone can join!
Not only will individuals and businesses be able to collaborate with other entities outside their company, they can also have interdepartmental cooperation. Bluehouse Beta is available at http://bluehouse.lotus.com/.
A new version of Cloud Studio was released last November this year. The focus of this release was to launch the new feature included – the Profiles. The profiles feature was created to manage the cluster of parameters needed to launch an instance by simplifying the flow of beginning instances by merging all necessary information into a one. This added feature will be very useful when utilizing images.
There are currently two profiles supported by Cloud Studio:
1. The OSGi profiles
OSGi profiles
2. The Generic EC2 profiles
Generic EC2 profiles
IBM (International Business Machines Corporation), realizing the need to optimize their network by supporting Independent Software Vendors, launched its new cloud computing applications with innovative and fresh services, software and resources. This was apparently a response to the call for the growing need to maximize data, services and applications. The new cloud service resources for Independent Software Vendors or ISVs will help them create new applications quickly and easily.
IBM- expanding their services.
The following are included in IBM’s expanded services:
*On-line demos and downloadable codes that will help for the designing and building of clouds-enabled services. These consist of technical outline and design plus technical support through IBM’s Innovative Centers.
*New Saas Enablement infrastructure providers. These help ISVs produce interoperable Saas solutions.
*New Marketing Resources, which includes free web conferencing service.
IBM aims to enhance and answer the needs of the growing web-based community. The company even offers consulting and implementation skills to encourage ISVs and private companies to utilize cloud services.
Web service is a very vital aspect in the daily lives of people nowadays, whether for business or for leisure. A lot of people actually rely on the web for storing important documents and files. But how sure are we of the safety of our documents? How can we be sure that these files won’t be infected by the viruses that commonly infect our personal computers? That is why Cloud Services and Digital Zone have collaborated to satisfy this aspect of our concerns.
The danger of an online storage virus is imminent.
The virus scanner that the two entities will work on shall be released as a web service. It will be a scanner specially made for protecting cloud storage so we can relax and stop worrying about the safety of our files. The virus scanner could also be integrated with almost any language such as Java, PHP, Ruby, Python and the likes.
The internet has served as an important part in people’s lives nowadays. A lot of people rely on it for personal and business reasons. One crucial role of the internet is its storage options. That is why having an email account is a necessity today. One can utilize his email, like Yahoo!mail or Gmail, to store important documents and transactions, without the threat of losing vital information. Another service that is being maximized is the Youtube, where individuals can upload, store and even share their videos.
But Amazon took a step further to help people around the world safely keep and store their files. They introduced the Amazon Simple Storage Service or simply Amazon S3. This application serves as a storage and retrieval facility, all in one. It lets the user have a dependable and safe storage that they can quickly access anytime, any place.
Amazon S3
Here are some of the features Amazon S3 offers:
• Storage of objects that have sizes ranging from 1 byte up to 5 gigabytes
• Unlimited number of objects can be stored
• Objects or files are stored in one bucket (United States or Europe) but these objects can be accessed anywhere in the world using a developer-assigned pass key.
• Safe and secured storage that cannot be accessed without proper authorization and authentication.
• Relatively cheaper since it is Pay-per-Use service
• Has a simple and easy to understand web service interface
Simple Interface of Amazon S3
Unlimited Storage plus User Friendly Interface
Amazon S3 is a wonderful feature to utilize, especially by free developers who are worried about data storage. It is reliable, speedy, uncomplicated and inexpensive!
Google Earth is one of the fascinating applications that Google has made. It allows you to have a view of the key cities and locations around the world. It presents satellite images in varying resolutions. The more popular the place or scene, the clearer is the image. 3D models of structures and buildings are uploaded into the application to give the viewer a better and clearer image of the location. Aside from that, Google Earth also has the capacity to let the user monitor and view the traffic. And the best part is that it is available in 23 different languages!
Google Earth & Map showing 3D image of buildings
But now, more than the features previously included, Google Earth introduces the Google Earth & Map Contacts Navigator.
This feature allows the user to add his friends and family in his account. The user is then able to view the picture and location of his contacts anywhere around the globe. What’s more, it is so easy to use! Google Earth will provide you with the step-by-step guidelines on how to properly use this feature and utilize it. It is convenient for business and leisure.
New Google Earth Contacts Navigator
Furthermore, this feature can also give you detailed instructions and directions on how to get to the address of your contact. Convenient, isn’t it?
The Contacts Navigator gives directions.