Is cloud computing right for your business?

Many businesses are deep into cloud computing these days. Should you go there or are you already on board? While many companies are on the verge of using cloud computing, it's still tough to figure out whether it works for your company, according to blogger Craig Nelson.

Nelson works at Microsoft, and is the host of the Cloud404 Blog (http://blog.cloud404.com). His expertise and education is in incident response, computer forensics, and security architecture. He recently outlined a variety of reasons to go to the cloud. Here are a few:

• Lack of time or expertise (including security) to build and maintain an in-house solution.
• Seeking the advantage/speed of new features that are released quickly
• It's cheap (either free, or subscription fees)

There are other reasons, too; chief among them is security. Using the cloud can provide a cheaper, more efficient way to repair a security hole, Nelson says.

"From an architectural perspective, there are questions pertaining to the performance and manageability of cloud-based resources, and if the focus should be on 'private clouds' (locally hosted resources that use similar patterns and practices related to cloud computing) rather than'‘public clouds,'" he writes.

For more on cloud computing:
- see Craig Nelson's blog

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