Far too often when businesses budget for technology they forget the not so obvious, but critical pieces of the infrastructure. The obvious pieces like hardware, software, and maybe even some install services are put right into the budget. However maintenance, support, backup, and disaster recovery seem to be an afterthought. I have also seen many times where they did not even plan for power and cooling. Nothing like getting everything in, hooked up, and oops the power just overloaded.

One of the mistakes that many start-ups make is they do not realize they are not building their business on solid ground. Why? Mainly because they do not have all of the information they need to see that the ground below is nothing but sand.

Ok, I will step away from the engineering ramble and put it more into start-up logic. When you are starting up a new business you are taught to make sure you have finances, competition information, marketing, etc. set up properly. While all of this is critical to your business, so is technology an area that often overlooked.

VMware announce that with their new version of vSphere 4.1 they are lowering the price and adding the enhanced features live vMotion, which allows you to move a running server from one physical server to another.

Microsoft made sure that everyone knew their intentions of ruling the Cloud. They see serious threat that a Cloud infrastructure could bring to their business model. It was either jump on the bus or get left behind. Microsoft, as always, is not content to just get on the bus, they want to drive it.

There are a few things that came out of the way Microsoft entered the Cloud…

1. This will validate the capability of the Cloud as well as its longevity. Let’s face it, Microsoft may be a necessary evil to some, but they still have the ability to drive people to a technology and have ruled the data center for many years.
2. Microsoft just brought the Linux versus Windows platform to a whole new level. However in this game the Linux based platforms have a sizable lead.
3. Most important to Small and Medium Businesses, this will bring more innovation. Not just from Microsoft, but all of the other Cloud vendors whose primary purpose was to get their technology out. User friendly was not the primary goal. Although there are several systems that are.

I have mentioned the great benefits before of the Cloud (article) and how it can help businesses start up and keep up. Cloud is the future and it is here now. It is not for everyone and/or everything. There are still many things I would not put on the Cloud just yet. However it can no longer be ignored.

Looks like the future is Cloudy!