Google Apps .. A wonderful set of business applications on Cloud

I found Google Apps, a value for money. Recently, I signed up with google for a domain name and it cost me 10$. I got google apps, a set of applications like docs, calendar, sites , chat, and a private registration of the domain name as a package.

Whilst working with Apps, I developed a fresh perspective on cloud computing. I got thrilled to see myemail@mydomain.com. Being relieved from the pain of licensing hassles, I had my office apps ready in a few minutes of subscribing to google apps. I was floored by the colloboration feature as I could now share my documents with any email address and I found calendar appointments a breeze compared to microsoft office.


Truly, google apps provides small business a value and helps them grow. A Small Business can get its identity with custom mail ids, and the employees can start using calendar,chat and other apps in just a few clicks. I believe that Google Apps fosters small businesses goals, by providing them necessary infrastructure so that they can focus on their core business.

Cloud Computing in a nut shell

What is cloud computing?


Cloud computing is a computing style that allows any Internet enabled devices like Smart phone,laptop or PC to work with IT applications, while the applications and data are hosted on any of the application servers and storage servers on Internet defined within the service provider range.


Take a look at the architecture of cloud in the picture. The provision module provides the servers and storage on demand there by providing the elasticity. Reporting services maintain the usage of the user and reports the bill. Admin & monitor is responsible for maintaining the 99.9$ up time that most cloud providers promise as SLA, and monitoring the health status of servers and storage.


All the data involved in the transactions are stored on the cloud storage. Even the application is streamed from a remote server on cloud.A quick example is Gmail. Gmail provides an user interface streamed from a remote google server cloud. All the mails are stored back to a storage on the cloud.


Why is cloud computing a trend now?


Cloud provides number of benefits like unlimited storage, scalable computing power in minutes, access to documents from anywhere in the world, flexible to grow and shrink in capacity as required. Google is already providing Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites, and more at $50 per user per year. That's a bunch of business applications to keep a small business going successfully with out any upfront investment and commitment to hardware and software. If you need a server, rackspacecloud provides cloud server Starting at $10.95/mo or 1.5¢/hr with on-demand servers and scalability. That's it, there is no upfront investment needed if you need a high end server for your business.
Some of the other cloud providers are amazon, skytap, salesforce, windows Azure and so on.


I would like to mention the business value proposition here. With the quick availability of cloud for short lived applications, instant scalability on-demand, pay per usage model without any commitment, small businesses can now focus on core business, leaving the IT hassles to cloud providers.


Let me also give you a quick insight into the technologies that provide the cloud infrastructure. First one is Grid Computing, a software that divides pieces of tasks among a cluster of networked loosely coupled computers.Second is Hardware Virtualization,a physical server that enables multiple isolated virtual servers to run on it. Well, I'll talk in a separate blog about grid and virtualization in detail.


Thanks for reading. Keep watching this blog for the next one and I'll continue from where I left, into the world of cloud computing.

Google video on Cloud Computing