Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
Description of ‘Internet’ Category: The Internet is the system of interconnected or internetworked computers and computer networks.
Thursday, November 17th, 2011
Directing traffic to your website is only the first part of increasing your online sales. In the past we have often discussed the various methods for targeting your potential customers but what happens when they are actually on your website. Do your visitors follow through with a purchase or do your leads tend fizzle out? With this question in mind we offer the following suggestions to increase the likelihood of a sale once your customers are able find you on the Web. 
Ease Your Customer’s Fear:
With most transactions there are associated risks. It is very important to address these risks because they may immediately deter your potential customers. Having a secure website, a customer privacy policy, and offering a money back guarantee is just a few ways that you can put your customer’s fears to rest.
Create Value and Offer Incentives:
One of the great things about the Internet is that it allows people to easily explore their options however this can also make it hard for a business to stand out amongst competitors. It will help if you offer additional value whether it is through better pricing, a higher level of quality, or better customer service.
Display Genuine Testimonials:
The past positive experiences of your current customers can help encourage new customers to choose your products or services. People love reviews because they help them to predict their level of satisfaction based on the experiences of others. A positive and genuine customer testimonial can often prove to be a major factor in a visitor’s decision to choose your company over one of your competitors.
Build a Relationship:
Be sure to express product or service recommendations based on the information that your customers provide. Making a one-time sale might be your initial goal but you should always strive to build a long term or an ongoing business to client relationship. Nurturing this type of relationship will not only influence future business with that particular customer but it will also increase your reputation and show your potential customers that you care. Follow up emails, subscriptions, memberships, loyalty programs, customer satisfaction surveys, and product recommendations are all great ways to continue positive communication with your customers.
Additional suggestions include:
- Allowing your customers to focus by limiting the number of products offered on each page.
- Creating an attention grabbing headline for your products page.
- Clearly expressing your products, how they work, and how it will benefit the customer.
- Focusing on your visitor by using terms like “you and your” while avoiding “we, me, and I”.
- Creating a sense of urgency without being pushy. For example use “limited time only” or “Available while supplies last”.
- Using various color schemes and text formatting to grab your visitor’s attention.
- Determining what methods, prices, or product features work best for your business and attracts more customers. (Split Testing)
These are just some basic suggestions that can be implemented to increase your online sales. I urge you not to stop here and continuously explore your own ideas to discover what works best for your business.
For additional tips please visit How to increase sales and 6 Sure Ways to Increase Sales!
Thanks for reading and Good Luck with increasing your business’s sales.
Dustin
CDTek.com
Tags: business sales, business website, customers, increasing sales, sales, website, website sales
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Small Business Tips | No Comments »
Friday, June 24th, 2011
Usability testing is all about collecting feedback from your website’s visitors and using that information to further improve your website’s performance. Companies perform website usability testing to assess the level of functionality, design, and navigation. Once gathered, the information from the assessment is used to implement changes or enhancements that increase quality and user experience.
from http://www.4qsurvey.com/, June 2011
When it comes to testing, the developers or designers are often too close to the project to properly address usability. Usability testing should be conducted using people who only have basic knowledge about the site and are unfamiliar with the layout and navigation. Usually a company will hire a few individuals to test the website and an observer monitors them to see how intuitive the testers find the website. The individuals that are conducting the test will typically ask the tester task oriented questions like “if you wanted to make a purchase, where would you go? These types of questions address whether or not the website has its important pathways labeled.
In addition to performing a small task the tester will be asked to provide their opinion regarding design layout, style, colors, pictures and other elements found throughout the website. The company’s goal is to see if the users can quickly get a feel for the site, understand its purpose, navigate it easily, and find it visually enjoyable. Regardless of how much brainstorming takes place during the creation of the website there will always be something that someone misses or a better way to do something. This is why usability testing is so important, during these test designers get to take a step back and see what they missed. The site visitor or potential customer holds the final opinion and it’s the site’s level of usability that directly correlates with the number of visitors and the level of customer satisfaction.
These types of tests happen throughout several phases of website development. As problems are discovered and solutions are implemented the customer experience and usability of the website will greatly increase. The customer isn’t the only one benefiting from usability testing. For the business, usability testing works on guiding customers to the company’s end goal whether it’s selling a product, receiving customer data, or simply providing information.
Although an in person observation may be the most effective way to perform a usability test, there are also a number of online usability tools that can assist in similar functions. The following is 5 tools to help increase the usability of a website. These types of tools monitor and track user actions to determine if they can efficiently navigate the website.
ClickDensity helps identify and address website architecture errors. By producing heat maps, ClickDensity displays which areas and links on a website are most popular. The heat maps enable users to view where people like and don’t like to click to make it extremely quick and easy to design and optimize a website’s layout.
Concept Feedback enables users to optimize their usability based on the prospective of an outsider. With this tool a website can be uploaded and examined by a professional web design team. Following their testing the team of experts provides detailed solutions and recommendations within 48 hours
The 4Q Survey helps build customer engagement by asking four important questions. The questions are, based on today’s visit, how would you rate your site experience overall? Which of the following best describes the primary purpose of your visit? Were you able to complete the purpose of your visit today? (If yes) What do you value most about the [sitename] website? (If no) Please tell us why you were not able to fully complete the purpose of your visit today? The software provides an intuitive suite of online tools to review your customer feedback and create solutions.
The Five Second tests help users perfect their landing pages and call to actions. With this tool you can create a set of questions that you think testers should be able to answer quickly upon viewing your site. In order to see if your design is calling attention to the right elements, a screen shot of your website is displayed to a group of testers. However the screenshot is only displayed for five seconds and following the five seconds the testers are asked to answer the set questions. The Test then reports the answers graphically to show what areas drew the tester’s attention the most.
OpenHallway lets website owners conduct remote usability testing. Various scenarios or projects can be created to test and observe web visitors. Once a scenario is designed and the directions are uploaded a user will log in and begin testing. During the test the monitor and voice of the tester are recorded. They are encouraged to speak their thoughts throughout the test and share their final thoughts as they upload their recording. This tool allows you to get the same experience as traditional testing without requiring people to travel, or having to create an observation environment and purchasing observation equipment.
We chose to focus on these five tools because each of them performs usability testing in a different way. There a number of tools available however there functions often repeat. Some of the other usability testing tools include Clicktale, Userfly, User Testing, Google Website Optimiser, and Webnographer.
Website usability and customer experience are crucial when it comes to your business website and should never be overlooked. Don’t limit yourself to one tool, many of these programs offer free trials so try them out and find the one that works the best for you.
Thanks for Reading have a Great Day!
Dustin
CDTek.com
Tags: customer experience, test, tool, usability, usability testing, usability tools, user, user testing, website
Posted in Business Tools, Internet | No Comments »
Friday, May 13th, 2011
During the past couple of weeks the Internet has been buzzing with the news that various companies have been vying for Skype. A few of the companies that have been eyeing the Internet telephone service included Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. On May 10, 2011 in the official Skype Blog it was announced that Microsoft has put an end to this competition by paying $8.5 billion to acquire Skype. Microsoft stated that they finalized the offered price of $8.5 billion dollars on April 18, 2011 and signed the contract on May 9, 2011, making this deal Microsoft’s largest purchase to date.
From Microsoft.com
May 2011
At the Microsoft and Skype Press Conference, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Balmer and Skype CEO Tony Bates went into details regarding the recent purchase and the directions that they intend to take. It is their goal to provide “experiences that aren’t limited by distance or device”. Peter Klein the Chief Financial Officer for Microsoft stated that both companies “felt that it was a compelling opportunity to build on their strengths and accelerate what they do”.
If you are unfamiliar with Skype it’s a Voice over Internet Protocol (IP) service which is used to make calls using the Internet. Skype offers free Skype to Skype text, voice and video. Skype also offers a low rate premium service that also offers regular Internet calling to mobile and landlines, group video calling, and a ton of additional features. At the time of the purchase Skype already had over 170 million users and reported over $860 million in revenue in 2010. Skype is already a successful company that is continuing to grow strong and offers tremendous growth opportunities for both businesses and consumers. Last year Skype was used to make about 207 billion minutes worth of voice and video calls. Was Skype worth the $8.5 billion that Microsoft paid? Potential revenue aside, the acquisition of Skype was a solid strategy to increase their brand recognition and to prevent their competition (Google) from gaining a further advantage.
Now that Microsoft has purchased Skype, what can we expect? During the Microsoft and Skype live press conference the following key points were emphasized.
Microsoft will begin to offer product support to their customers using Skype. (Microsoft Office, Xbox, Messenger, Hotmail, Outlook, Lync, Exchange, etc.)
- Microsoft Devices that utilize Skype
More of their products and devices will feature Skype. Microsoft has the opportunity for more exposure within mobile, desktop and gaming environments. (Xbox, Xbox Live, Xbox Kinect, Windows PC, Windows Phone, etc.)
The Windows phone can properly compete with the other smartphones on the market by offering a product with video chatting like Apple’s FaceTime.
- Could be a big win for Facebook
Microsoft is an investor in Facebook and could decide to offer Skype as a way to further propel the peer-to-peer social networking website.
Most importantly there will be continued support for non-Microsoft users and devices. The company was very outspoken about building and enhancing the current customer experience. Microsoft has fully committed to serving current Skype users regardless of what type of device they utilize. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise even though some users were concerned about not being able to use Skype anymore. Skype already has a following of 170 million and a good number of those users are not strictly Microsoft users. Although only providing Skype on Microsoft products would force people who want to use Skype to buy their devices it would also upset many of the Skype users who use it on non-Microsoft systems. Part of the reason why Skype is so valuable to Microsoft is the fact that it already has a large customer base and upsetting the current users or deterring future customers would only go to show that the $8.5 billion spent on Skype was a waste.
Many Skype users have already questioned how this will affect them and seem to be unsure about Microsoft/Skype’s future intentions. During the press conference users were reassured that this business venture will be beneficial for all parties involved and will only enhance the Skype brand and user experience. The core assets of Skype are an engaged user base, monetized opportunities, and innovation in technology. When considering these assets and how Microsoft is an “ambitious, forward thinking, and irrepressible company that has been empowering consumers and businesses for over 35 years”, the two companies seem to be a perfect match. As for whether $8.5 billion was too much to pay, we can only wait and see but Microsoft remains very hopefully due to Skype’s strong foundation and future growth opportunity.
How do you feel about Microsoft and Skype, What would you like to see Microsoft do with Skype?
For the full press conference visit: Microsoft/Skype Press Conference
And to learn more about Skype visit: What Skype has to offer
Thanks for Reading have a Great Day!
Dustin
CDTek.com
Tags: growth opportunities, internet, Microsoft, press conference, Skype, Skype users, video calling, VoIP
Posted in Communication, Internet | No Comments »
Friday, April 1st, 2011
When considering the local presence of your business there are a couple key factors that will often play a vital role in how prominent you are in the local search results. When customers try to find your business by searching a service or product that you offer combined with the location of you business, is your business getting the necessary exposure?
One of the best ways to increase your local presence is to create and optimize a Google Places page. A place page is a profile of your business that incorporates crucial information such as your business’s phone number, map location, description, address, photos, videos, customer reviews, associated links, and any other information that is necessary for your customers to know.
Why should you have a Google Place Page?
Your customers are out there and are probably trying to find your business, make it easy for them to locate you! A place page shines a spotlight on your business and consolidates all of the important information that customers need or want to know about your company. In addition it also draws in customer reviews and your current reputation from third party sites. Also because a place page is a part of Google they will show your site more love and credibility when searches are performed in the Google search engine.
Establishing a Google place page provides an increase presence when customers perform local searches. For example when a customer searches for a product or service plus a location that your business serves users will receive a page place search result. These results will include the name of your company and the information you provide in your place page account along with a map image of your location. Along with having a Google place page some additional key defining factors that are thought to affect a business’s standing in local searches include:
- Having a business address in the location being searched.
- Volume and quantity of citation links which occur when other sites mention or reference your business across the Internet.
- Quality and quantity of structured and unstructured customer reviews that are from your business place page as well as third party sites.
- Appropriate keyword use in place page title and description. (Avoid overusing keywords)
- Quality, quantity, accuracy, and description of inbound links.
- Velocity of customer reviews or how frequently you are being referenced.
- The number of times that your business appears on other businesses map searches.
- And the photos and videos that you include on your profile page.
How to claim your business and establish a Google place page:
- Visit Google Places and click on the “get started” option.
- Create an account –although it is completely optional Google likes to see users create accounts with emails that match the domain to the website for their business because it increases the trust factor.
- Click on the button that says “List your business”
- Fill in the text fields for country, phone number, company name, street address, city, state, email address, hours of operation, customer payment options, business description, associated links, and your websites URL.
- Fill in the categories, Google offers five input boxes for categories and you should use all five category boxes although Google does not require you to do so. There is really no reason not to take advantage of all the category fields and if you don’t see a category that you want you can create one however it is advised that you use at least one of the ones that are provided.
- Select the service areas by determining a service radius or individually list specific areas that you serve.
- Once you input this information Google will automatically generate a map with your location and will also display all the information that you provided below.
- Add any additional information that you feel is important to convey to your customers.
- Add up to 10 pictures while complying with the Google image submission guidelines.
- Paste and attach any YouTube video URLs that you want to display.
- Click Submit, once submitted Google offers two validation methods the first being a post card which takes a week or two to arrive and provides a pin number to activate the place page. The second option is to receive a phone call that provides the activation code. Although the post card takes longer than the phone call it further builds trust from Google because it confirms that your business is at the location that you specified whereas a phone call would only ensure the correct phone number and not necessarily the location.
- Once you receive and enter the pin number you have claimed your business place page and can update it through the Google Accounts Dashboard. Another detail worth mentioning is that a user can have multiple place pages as long as each of the pages is associated with a different business.
Once you have created a place page for your business you should see your page results when performing a local search. By having a place page and taking into account the factors discussed earlier your business should be able to increase its local presence.
Thanks for Reading have a Great Day!
Dustin
CDTek.com
Tags: business, customer, Google, Google Places, local presence, location, place, place page
Posted in Internet, Small Business Tips | No Comments »
Friday, December 31st, 2010
Several of our other blog articles detail how to ensure that your home PC is secure but few people realize that their mobile devices are just as vulnerable if not more vulnerable and are likely to encounter some form of security intrusions. Provided are a few methods designed to protect you, your Smartphone and your other devices fro m danger!
- First off, many smartphones now come equipped with a locking feature which is vital for keeping unauthorized users off your equipment. If this feature available for your device it is important that you activate the locking feature. Even if the information found on is not overly confidential, the unwarranted access to your device alone can prove to be harmful. Although sometimes locking it isn’t good enough, so please keep your device with you or in a safe location, in other words don’t leave it where it can be accessed or stolen.
- When we think of keeping our data safe we don’t really think of physical damage anymore it’s all about viruses and security but buying a case for your phone and preventing physical damage is just as important. Even though most of the information can often be recovered from a damaged phone, you can potentially avoid this hassle if you buy a sturdy phone case and refrain from using it around water.
- Wi-Fi Hot Spots are great but users should be aware that they are also subject to many risk. Just as with laptops, hackers can easily intercept data packets sent over unsecure hotspots. Steer clear of any website that require login using a password over these networks, especially your financial websites. To reduce these risks follow these options, they can be found in your mobile phones network and security menus.
- Disable Ad-Hoc mode
- Turn off file sharing
- Turn off network discovery
- Encrypt your email
- Protect yourself with a virtual private network (VPN)
- Disable your wireless adapter
- Watch out for shoulder surfers
- Beware phony hot spots
- Turn on your Firewall
- When Browsing watch for the same Phishing Scams that you would when using your home PC and never provide personal information such as bank account numbers or credit card information to any website using your phone.
- When sending email avoid sending any important information without encryption. Additionally when opening emails it’s advised not to open any attachments without spam and virus scanning programs since your phone is susceptible to virus and other security threats.
- Get Mobile security protection software. Smartphone’s come equipped with mobile security protection but there are additional programs that are beneficial to protecting your device such as Lookout Mobile Security and McAfee Mobile.
- Just like a home PC it is important for you to update your phone as soon as updates become available. Missing out on crucial updates leaves your phone unsecured.
- Avoid Jailbreaking your device! It might seem worth it to have limitless possibilities but at what cost. Jail breaking opens your devices up to even more risks and just in case you had a warranty you won’t anymore.
- Use only trusted software, given that the apps in your smartphone app store go through an approval process they are most likely safe but for those of you out there that are able to access unauthorized software due to Jail Breaking your device you’re only welcoming a host of software potentially riddled with viruses.
- Try not to keep sensitive information on it. In the event that someone does obtain your phone and acquire access to it that information is now theirs, to do whatever they want with it. Even with a password protection certain people know the tricks to get into your phone, so store your information somewhere more secure.
- Disable blue tooth when not using it. Avoid taking Bluetooth calls from numbers that you are unfamiliar with and circumvent any unsolicited file transfers. Leaving your Bluetooth on potentially allows other users to view your mobile activity information and invade your privacy.
- Some mobile services offer a GPS tracking setting as well as a Remote Wipe option. If ever lost, you have the option to activate the GPS tracker and locate your phone. Similarly if the phone is lost without any possibility of being found users can protect their information by executing a remote wipe. A remote wipe will clear and information off the phone and permanently disable the service.
In general it is important to treat your mobile device as you would your home or office computer. Mobile phones are just as vulnerable as your PC and although mobile security might not be as emphasized as PC security it is as equally important. Be sure to practice safe and secure precautions regardless of what type of device you are using.
Thanks for Reading have a Great Day!
Dustin
CDTek.com
Tags: mobile device, Mobile security, phone, Protection, Smartphone, Wi-Fi
Posted in Communication, Hardware, Internet, Security | No Comments »
Friday, December 24th, 2010
 Searching the internet is a common task for most of us and has become another part of our day to day routine. However there are those people out there that are still plagued with poor or inaccurate search results. This can be reduced and the following tips are here to illustrate the basic search techniques to help improve your search results.
If worded correctly and emphasized accordingly, a search engine has the power to find almost anything that a user is seeking. If you’re the type that just dives right into your searches then you are most likely missing out on the best results. Try out these methods of performing a search and see if you notice a difference.
The Basics
- Search the subject by narrowing the topic and adding search terms
Limiting the topic by using exact terms will return fewer and more accurate results. For example if you were interested in locating an outdoor movie theatre in Maryland it would be important to include the word “outdoor” and “theatre” in the search window. Performing a search with just a movie theatre would most likely return a host of results that has nothing at all to do with Drive-in theatres.
- Exclude Results
Before trying an exact phrase with quotation marks you can also exclude any unwanted search criteria with the subtraction sign. By placing the minus sign in front of the term you want to exclude it will tell the search engine to ignore any sites yielding that result (example “outdoor theatres Maryland -Annapolis”).
- Try to use the exact phrase
Searching outdoor movie theatres would return with sites that include any of the following words: outdoor, movie, and theatres. However adding quotation marks around the words “outdoor movie theatres” would return only search result pages with all the words found in it.
- Word Variation
Still too many results and not exact matches for what you need? Try using a capital “OR ” in between the variations while still using the quotation marks. Like this “Drive-in movie theatres” OR “Outdoor movie theaters”. This technique will result in sites containing either of the phrases. This type of search method is known as a Boolean Search.
- Place Name
Add any other necessary details such as where you’re looking (pace name). In this case we would include “Drive-in movie theatres” in Maryland. If you have any words misspelled Google often assists with corrections by displaying a “Did you mean…..” at the top of the page. In addition Google also displays pages that are on the same website as the previous search result with an indentation. Learn to recognize this as it will be a hint that you may have already checked out this site on one of its other pages.
- Scan Keywords
When Google returns the search results, locate the Cached Link next to the web link. Clicking this will open a window and highlight the words that the search engine found in common in your search box. With this the user can now skim the document and locate material relevant to their search quickly and efficiently.
Hope these tips put an end to your search engine problems and for more basic search engine information and tips check out the following:
About Search Engines
Using Keywords
Thanks for Reading have a Great Day!
Dustin
CDTek.com
Tags: business, internet, results, search engine
Posted in Internet | No Comments »
Friday, October 29th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEOand Technical Support for business.
Anyone will tell you that a lot of business is done on the go these days. You’re out at a meeting or just traveling for work and you need to get some stuff done. Mobile devices go a long way in enhancing human productivity. However, it can get complicated when half of your staff wants one device and the others are splintered. It will be a nightmare for your IT department.
An important part of planning is setting up a standard for your business. Just like anything else, you need to have a framework in place to facilitate these areas of your company. It’s best to let the IT department work their magic here, but you definitely have input.
Stick with something that everyone can get their work done on. For some companies, it’s Apple’s iPhone. For others, RIM’s Blackberry line gets the job done. Both have perks and drawbacks for different types of businesses. Meet with your staff, if your company is small enough, or take a poll to see what your employees NEED, not want.
By establishing a standard for smartphones in your organization, you will prevent a lot of IT headaches. At the same time, you’ll squash the deluge of requests for personal phones or special requests for cutting edge tech.
-Josh
CDtek
Tags: business, IT, Mobile, Planning, Security, Small Business, tech
Posted in Internet | No Comments »
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEO and Technical Support for business.
Getting support for your technology can be really troublesome at times. Finding the answers necessary can take forever and you might even have to pay for customer support calls. Well, here’s a suggestion for minor tech support needs in the future: join a tech support forum.
Whether founded by a specific company, such as Apple or Microsoft, or as a result of enthusiasts, forums can be a great place to get involved with a tech support community. Often users will be people like yourself as well as people with years of experience, looking for problems to solve. This mix of members allows for very interesting discussion.
Now, you should always be careful with what you post online. If you post all your servers’ IP addresses because you’re having a DNS issue, someone will likely take advantage. However, you can be less specific and still get the help you need.
Forums are essentially collectives of knowledgeable people. Everyone has different experiences and you might be surprised how you can help others and also help yourself.
-Josh
CDTek.com
Tags: Community, Forums, services, support, tech support
Posted in Internet, Small Business Tips | No Comments »
Friday, September 10th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide 2 services, Internet Marketing / SEO and Technical Support to small and medium business. Okay, so you know how shipping ports work, right? Ships come into certain ones, while others are reserved for other types of traffic. This is analogous to how ports work when talking about exchanging data via the Web or your local network. Now, a good firewall will block the superfluous ones for you, but you might find you need to fine-tune it a bit. There’s also a great chance you’ll never have to deal with any of this. That’s what IT people are for right? Well, in the likely chance you’re going to be making decisions affecting those people, and the rest of the company, here are a few ports to know.
Port 110/25: POP/SMTP (E-Mail)
These ports are designed to have e-mail exchanges funneled through it. I won’t get into how traffic is sorted, but suffice it to say that this is the port universally agreed upon to get email. Make sure it is left open. POP and SMTP are two different ways to fetch email, and either one might be in use for your email client.
Port 443: SSL (Secure Web Connection)
We’re all seen the little lock, castle, whatever at the bottom of our browser when we go to check our bank account info. This means that the connection is secure, because the data being sent back and forth is encrypted. Port 443 is reserved for this, so make sure it is open, or you won’t be able to go anywhere that requires a name and password.
Port 80: HTTP (Web Browsing)
Straightforward web browsing is relegated to Port 80. All of your connections, usually just Internet surfing, that use HTTP go through here. If this port is closed, you won’t be able to get outside of your network for Web access. Good for tight lockdowns, bad for just about everything else.
-Josh
CDtek
Tags: blog, firewall, internet, mac, networking, PC, port, Security, TCP ports, web
Posted in Internet | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide 2 services, Internet Marketing / SEO and Technical Support to small and medium business.
Paying for information technology hardware and software can be costly. Okay, it is costly. Getting your business the tech it needs to thrive in today’s economy is necessary to success. However, odds are you don’t have the budget for several servers, a full time IT guy/gal, and all the other things that go along with it. Enter, Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas).
IaaS allows for companies to outsource their need for technology to bigger companies. It’s a lot like renting, except there is rarely physical hardware involved on the client’s end. IaaS uses Cloud Computing methods to connect the client, you, with a networking infrastructure somewhere else. That’s right, it uses the Internet.
Now, the benefits here are obvious. You get virtual machines that behave like physical machines, only for a fraction of the cost and sometimes, with little or no software maintenance required. That’s a big perk. You get reliable service combined with systems that you only pay for when you use them. Savings = huge. However, there are also downsides.
Okay, well I say downside(s), but the biggest one you have to worry about is availability. While the company you’re contracting is certainly going to guarantee you almost non-stop access, what you need to worry about is your own Internet access. The fact of the matter is that if the Internet connection goes down between your home/office/moonbase and theirs, you are without your precious service.
All in all, you need to examine what works best for your company. If you can’t afford to upgrade your tech right now, maybe consider IaaS as a good stopgap. Some of the major cloud computing service providers include Amazon, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Skytap
-Josh
CDTeK
The major cloud service providers include <a href=”http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/” target=”_blank”>Amazon</a>, <a href=”http://code.google.com/appengine/” target=”_blank”>Google</a>, <a href=”http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/cloud.html” target=”_blank”>HP</a>, <a href=”http://www.ibm.com/ibm/cloud/” target=”_blank”>IBM</a>, <a href=”http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/” target=”_blank”>Microsoft</a>, <a href=”http://www.salesforce.com/cloudcomputing/” target=”_blank”>Salesforce</a>, and <a href=”http://www.skytap.com” target=”_blank”>Skytap</a>
Tags: Cloud Computing, networking, Utilities
Posted in Business Tools, Computers, Internet, Small Business Tips | 1 Comment »
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