Cloud Computing, briefly

At its core, the cloud delivers computing as a service rather than a product. This is analogous to many utilities we’ve been using for many years. For example, typically electricity is a service provided by a power company. The power company owns generation plants and distributes the electricity to consumers. Consumers pay for the service based on electricity used, by the kilowatt. However, instead of using the power company, consumers could purchase products, like gas powered generators or solar panels, to generate their own power. With cloud computing, products are the servers and software purchased to support corporate email or file storage. Instead of those purchases, companies can realize significant benefits by subscribing to email or file storage services and paying based on utilization. While this has created a major buzz, individuals have been using hosted or cloud-based email services, like Hotmail.com, for years, and for corporations, cloud computing is parallel to the time-sharing of mainframe computers in 1970’s.


Rick Huebner is President & CEO of VISTECH.com, a technology company based in Hartford, CT. VISTECH.com assists clients with their IT strategy and delivers a wide range of products and services including Cloud Managed Services; Unified Communications/VOIP solutions; and outsourced software/web application design & development