Cloud Services
Expanding capabilities and controlling cost is the value proposition for the movement called "Cloud". The term comes from the designation of internet-based resources being shown on diagrams symbolically as a cloud. Universally recognized, fuzzy and with unknown innards, the cloud just sits there working without us having to deal with the details. Within the cloud there are data centers with racks and racks of computers to act as hosts for the I.T. things we want to do. In those data centers, specialists maintain all the hardware, operating systems, security, application installation, configuration, provisioning and hundreds of technical functions that go with the territory. Your business could do this too, and to some extent it probably does if you have a server and some desktop computers with applications you use every day. Keeping them healthy is always a challenge and it takes money out of your bottom line.
By concentrating the infrastructure, economy of scale comes into play in a big way. Thousands of individual businesses can benefit from the resources of a cloud service provider, having access to feature-rich applications without the headache of owning a data center.
Microsoft Cloud Services
Microsoft has become a big player in this area. This website is hosted on Microsoft's Office Live Small Business service and can be operated and maintained from anywhere there's a browser and internet connection. Everything is on a server "somewhere in the cloud". Here's some of the current Microsoft Cloud components that serve different types of customers.
Skydrive
Office Live Small Business
Office 365
Intune
Azure
Remote Desktop Services
Windows Server
System Center
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