Cloud hosting technology is the next big thing that has happened to the Information technology scenario and it has transformed the way enterprises and individual access IT services. But nowhere is this more visible than the small and medium enterprises. The reasons are not far to find. In all aspects, whether it be IT infrastructure costs, real time collaboration or efficient utilization of the technology manpower cloud computing technology have proved itself useful for the enterprises. But most important contribution of cloud computing lies in the business focus improvement for the enterprise by liberating financial and human resources invested in the IT support and management.

What essentially is cloud computing?

Before going into the benefits of cloud computing for enterprises, with particular emphasis on small and medium business, it would be worthwhile to know what cloud is computing all about.

IT cloud or the cloud hosting services refers to a platform formed by the juxtaposition of technologies like virtual computing, distributed computing, and flexible networking processes. Thus IT cloud is better conceptualized as a service architecture where in IT infrastructure, software and even application platforms are offered as an on-demand always on available service. Two core features are: the services can be accessed over the internet and second the client or the end user access the IT infrastructure as a service or in other words rents out the IT infrastructure for their use.

Three core features of the cloud hosting services are:

Mobility: cloud hosting enables anywhere accessibility to the application which helps real time collaboration within the enterprise.

Provisioning: scalable IT resources at short notice ensure that the time to the market for a business process is very less and the risk of IT infrastructure investment is nonexistent for the enterprise. This also enables the enterprise to adopt the ‘pay as you go model’.

Maintenance and reliability: since the enterprise do not have to deal with IT infrastructure maintenance as the process is automated and the responsibility of the cloud hosting provider. Also redundancy ensures that the network reliability is guaranteed and assured.

Benefits of cloud hosting services

Any enterprises and particularly small and medium business benefit from the cloud hosting services in the following way:

· Local IT infrastructure costs eliminated: Small business can reduce or eliminate the local or on site IT infrastructure costs as the application delivery network comes ready made and always on available service. Hence there is no need install the local enterprise network and hence no huge upfront costs in buying servers, system upgrades or providing for backup and security tools. Since the cloud services are platform independent and it is on the cloud servers that the software is installed and run, the system requirement on the clients side are minimal. This eliminates the need for system upgrades, local backup facility or even network security and monitoring tools

· Outsourced IT management: The cloud hosting services comes with full features IT infrastructure management for the client which means that the enterprises are absolved of the responsibility of having local IT support and management personnel. Not only small businesses save on the cost of IT professionals they can gainfully use the capital liberated for improving the business focus and compete with their counterparts.

· Real Time Collaboration and use outsourced workforce: The cloud computing ensures that the enterprise application are accessible from anyplace anytime on the web from any browser. Further the multi-user real time means that businesses can use geographically spread labor force which is cost effective.

· Market your business process in least time: Small business is hard pressed for finance and human resources. Starting any new business process may be both time and costs intensive as well as requires technically skilled personnel. In a highly competitive business environment, the market cannot wait indefinitely for the launch of an innovative product. But cloud hosting technologies allows fast business process implementation and hence reduces the "time to the market" as well as tapping new opportunities by the small businesses.

· Green IT: Cloud computing is based on the twin concept of virtualization and distributed computing. This means that sharing of IT resources enables not only a costs effective IT environment bust also lees energy consumptions for offering the services. Also centralization of resources means less e-waste generated by each enterprise. This augurs very well for a lean thin and Green IT environment.