Posts tagged Cloud Computing
Social Networks for Authenticating Corporate Sites? Forget About It!
21 year ago
by David van Sunder
in Business
It's a great tool. But is it the right tool for the job?
Increasingly, web sites are allowing people to login using one of their existing social networking accounts. And for good reason. It makes life easier for users. Instead of having to signup for a new account and remember what login and password they used for a site, users can login using their account at Twitter, Facebook or another service. That can overcome the reluctance that a potential user might have to create an account at a site. The user will just use their login to whatever service is allowed by the site and boom! The site has another user that they might not otherwise have had.
Sounds great. Maybe we should use these social networking accounts to login everywhere. Why not use our Twitter or Facebook login to access our work accounts, too? At least that’s what a guest author on ReadWriteWeb suggested.
While I think enabling those types of logins on a customer facing site is great because of how it makes things easier on users, it’s not a good idea when dealing with corporate accounts and employees. (more…)
Cloud Computing: Is Your Head In the Clouds?
22 years ago
by David van Sunder
in Business
Everything is heading into the cloud...
Cloud computing is all the rage these days, but what does that term even mean? While many people think that it is the hip new thing, it has actually been with us for many years. At its most basic, cloud computing is computing where the data and applications used reside on a remote server. By that definition, even web based email is cloud computing. Doesn’t sound quite so new or cool anymore, does it?
While cloud computing might not be new, it is still a cool concept. It allows both individuals and businesses to simplify their lives and reduce costs by reducing the need to incur the hardware, software and tech support costs for maintaining certain products and services themselves. By using applications that are hosted over the web, individuals and businesses don’t have to worry about purchasing software licenses, doing software installs, configuring settings, doing upgrades and handling issues with their software. They also don’t have to worry about what happens if their computers or hard drives fail.
Those are all tremendous benefits for those who either don’t have the budget, time, desire or ability to maintain the software needed to get their work done using software installed on their own computers. And the variety of software available in the cloud is amazing these days. Nearly anything you want to do can be done through the cloud. What do you need to do? Email? Office applications? Project management? Project collaboration? Data backups and storage? Sales force automation? Customer relationship management? All of those are available and so many more.
With all of those applications available through the cloud and for much less expense than self hosting, why doesn’t everyone move everything to the cloud? (more…)