I know many of you have heard the buzz term "cloud computing". Well simply stated, this is the hosting of data and applications in remote locations (most likely data centers). If your IT company is telling you they have a cloud and its in their garage...run!

Wikipedia defines Cloud Computing as follows:

Cloud computing is the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources as a service over the Internet on a utility basis.[1][2] Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them.[3] Cloud computing services often provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.
The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on how the Internet is depicted in computer network diagrams and is an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it conceals.[4]
A technical definition is "a computing capability that provides an abstraction between the computing resource and its underlying technical architecture (e.g., servers, storage, networks), enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction."This definition states that clouds have five essential characteristics: on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service.

Now there are obvious concerns when it comes to moving your company into a cloud computing environment. Several of these concerns are:

1. Does your cloud provider or IT provider really have a stable infrastructure to provide you with the service, support, and expertise you need. There are many local companies to Orlando make these claims and completely mislead the consumer.
2. Backups. Make sure all your data is being backed up in real-time and not nightly, weekly, etc...
3. Data Centers. Make sure your cloud is secure. To be sure of this, your provider will need to have your server, virtual or physical under its own lock and key. Additionally there are data centers that are more secure and they are called SAS70 Certified Data Centers. These are the data centers we use. They are stable and meet the requirements of HIPAA, FINFRA