I first heard about “The Cloud” and cloud computing while researching a story on electronic digital signage. I must admit—I didn’t really understand it very well at the time. Truth be told, I still don’t understand it completely. I do know that it serves as a way for small businesses to meet powerful computing needs without having to invest in and maintain a heavy IT system.

 

Basically, cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than as a product. 

 

Say you wanted to put up a really nice interactive website; one with some animation in it, interactive pages, streaming video and say an efficient online ordering system. It would require a pretty good amount of computing power to shuffle all that data around efficiently. You could run to Best Buy, purchase an appropriately powerful computer system with servers, routers and a bunch of software—then set it up, read all the manuals and figure out how it works—and then hire an experienced IT guy to maintain it and fix it when it crashes—which it will. 

 

Instead of all that, for a monthly fee you could go on doing what you’re good at—making signs. And when you need computing power for your business, you just log onto your private account with a cloud computing services provider and let the work of your website take place on their computers, using their servers, their routers and software—and their IT guy can worry about keeping the system up and running. 

 

Companies offering this type of service might have dozens or hundreds of servers to handle the combined computing needs of its clients. Interesting stuff. 

 

But it’s the ease of use and simplicity (from the end-user’s perspective) that makes cloud computing so attractive. It’s very often used to move data through electronic digital signage systems, especially the larger, multi-screen systems, but as with the website example, it can be very useful for many types of memory-hungry applications. 

 

As you have probably guessed, the term “cloud” is more or less a metaphor for the internet. Cloud computing is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualization. Details are separated from end-users, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in “the cloud” that supports them.

 

Of course there are security and privacy issues that arise, but the concept has been in play for long enough now that—with a little research—one can find excellent secure services to fit the needs of just about any type of business model—using either a public, shared community or private cloud infrastructure.

 

Cloud computing—also called software as a service (SaaS)—has really caught on in recent years, and is employed in a number of different capacities by a number of different industries. Cost of entry is relatively low and ongoing costs are structured according to the type and intensity of the usage needed. Think of it like a utility company for the 21st century. And like utilities, SaaS has become big business. According to an estimate by the Gartner Group, SaaS sales in 2010 reached $10B, and are projected to increase to $12.1B this year. 

 

Here at the offices of Sign & Digital Graphics, we use cloud computing services to power our internet site. I still don’t pretend to understand the ins and outs of SaaS or cloud computing, but I know enough to see the value it has for many small businesses, including sign and commercial graphics shops. Food for thought. Okay, back to work.