Different forms of Cloud Computing

Google Apps., Salesforce.com, Zoho Office and various other online applications use cloud computing as Software-As-Service (SAAS) model. These applications are delivered through browser, and multiple customers can access it from various locations. This model has become the most common form of cloud computing because it is beneficial and practical for both the customers and the services providers. For customers, there is no upfront investment and they can Pay-As-They-Go and Pay-As-They-Grow. On the other hand, the service providers, can grow easily as their customer base grows.
Aamzon.com, Sun and IBM offer on-demand storage and computing resources. Web service and APIs enable developers to use all the cloud from internet and allow them to create large-scale, full-featured application. Cloud is not simply limited to providing data storage or computing resources, it can also provide managed services or specific application services through web. source

how to avoid To Fail In The Cloud hosting

Our 2011 InformationWeek Analytics State of Cloud Computing Survey shows a 67 percent increase in the number of companies using cloud services, up from 18 percent in February 2009 and 30 percent in October 2010. IT now has a choice: Grab ownership of what's poised to be a core part of the enterprise technology toolset, or shortchange key functions and set ourselves up for disaster.

This shouldn't be a hard call, yet over and over we see CIOs underfund or ignore six major areas: integration, security, connectivity, monitoring, continuity planning and long-term staffing. Only 29 percent of companies using or planning to use the cloud have evaluated its impact on their architectures. Just 20 percent implement monitoring of applications and throughput; 40 percent don't have any monitoring in place. Talk about blind trust.

There's a misperception that it's smaller companies driving the cloud usage upswing. But don't write off management shortfalls as an SMB problem; we saw almost the same rates of use and planned use regardless of company size, once we delved into the data. There are now viable cloud options for almost every layer of the technology stack--from raw computing, storage, databases and utilities to e-mail to the spectrum of enterprise applications, all with a "point, click, go" functionality that has maverick business units everywhere rejoicing. Ignore management at your peril. source

Cloud hosting Future Is In China???

Can we expect that cloud hosting will be focused on China within 10 years? The infrastructure, the money, the central planning and their enviable access to resources make this inevitable. And why not? In the great marketing machine that surrounds cloud computing, the claim is that your data can be anywhere and that compute power should not be close to you, nor should you even care. And as China moves from agrarian subsistence to manufacturing and then onto a tertiary economy, it will be positioned to move into a services economy. Indeed, the country is doing so already in a range of areas. It seems clear that with access to capital, town planning and labor it is not so hard to conceive that China will be better positioned to be an early mover in the cloud marketplace.

It's already happening. IBM has announced its China Cloud with data center floor space ranging from 330,000 square meters to 620,000 and employing between 60,000 and 80,000 people.

Every data center has practical and physical requirements to build and operate. Today, the infrastructures that we use are often inadequate, and next generation data centers need strong capital investment, good local planning process for building permissions, redundant power supplies (and even power stations) and access to quality human resources.

Power Buildup
The Chinese government already knows that it has a power shortage today, and it's already taking steps to massively invest in alternative power generation with nuclear energy alone exceeding a planned 70 gigawatts.

China is also building out a new electricity grid that will be more efficient, more reliable and more capable than those of America or Europe. If only because it is using newer technology, China will have a significant edge in power in the next decade while Europe and America will still be debating what power policy to have.    source