Just a few short years ago, the term cloud computing was reserved for a few visionaries in IT departments.

Today, you can’t turn anywhere without seeing the term.

Everyone from SalesForce, to Apple, to Microsoft, and even Amazon is touting it as the wave of the future. But just what is cloud computing?

Enterprise cloud users benefit from the IT infrastructure vendors like Apple and Amazon already have in place to conduct their business or personal needs in a more cost efficient way.

Rather than investing valuable resources for on site software and hardware, cloud computing customers pay only for the resources they use.

And added advantage to enterprise cloud computing is that the end user is free from maintaining additional storage hardware or making sure software is kept current.

There are two main ways cloud computing has become immediately available to the average user.

Cloud Storage

Cloud storage was one of the first major services to appear and is still the primary way individuals take advantage of it. Two instantly recognizable sources for cloud storage are Apple and Amazon. Both offer 5GB of storage free to all registered users.

Apple iCloud

It automatically stores content so it’s always available on any Apple device you own: iphone, iPod touch, iPad, Macs.

This feature even works on PCs. The result is your photos, music, contacts, email, calendars info and a host of other information is available wherever you are without any maintenance or thought on your part.

Purchased music, books, and video, and Photo Stream don’t count against your free storage.

For most end-users, 5GB proves to be sufficient but additional storage is available at a fraction of the cost of purchasing hardware.

Amazon Cloud

Like Apple iCloud, Amazon cloud drive doesn’t count any books, music, or video purchased from Amazon against your storage space.

There are further advantages to cloud storage in these formats beyond being an additional hard drive in the sky.

With both Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s NOOK the user not only has all content available on practically any device but can pick up where they left off reading across platforms.

Say you were reading a book on your NOOK and the battery dies. From an Android app or your computer you can open the same book and it will be right where you left off.

Cloud-based Apps

These are apps that rely on a data connection that connects to the cloud network.

They mostly won’t work if you don’t have a 3G or WiFi connection since they’re so deeply enmeshed with cloud access. Since you’re only actually connecting to them when you need them, they’re also known as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

Many commercial SaaS vendors like NetSuite are now incorporating personal apps like Gmail and Google Calendar as add-ons.

The result is that what users are familiar with at work, at home, on the road, and at play are becoming one in the same.

Why the Cloud?

Put simply, SaaS and all enterprise cloud computing is cheaper, faster, works better, and is free from many of the problems of on-site storage and implementation.

Here are some interesting and upcoming trends of internet marketing:

Emergence of Mobile-dependent markets

Using mobile for surfing internet is not rare nowadays. As more and more mobile consumers go online, web publishers are coming up with special versions of their websites, tailored especially for the mobile market. Reports reveal that mobile ad spending will increase by 74% this year and by 2013 it is expected to touch a whopping $13 billion.

Pay-Per-Click Ads

This is one of the most effective ‘search engine’ marketing strategy which can drive a lot of visitors towards a site. Money is paid for the number of clicks received without wasting any extra penny uselessly. It is affordable and guarantees to improve one’s online marketing ROI. To make it look different from others, a lot of people are going for a video or image over the plain text ad, to make it more appealing.

Transparent Marketing

This term has different meaning and significance for the marketer and the consumer. Transparent marketing is believed to be sincere and honest marketing without presenting luring deceptive concepts about your product or services. The marketers know that customers are not likely to buy knitted dishonest stories, and hence have brought in transparency in their advertisements so that the potential customers know exactly what they will get. This trend has been in practice since the late nineties and is believed to continue to grow.

Large print

If you ask a direct response practitioner, he’ll tell you that increasing font size is the next big thing. Believe it or not, bigger font size is more attractive than smaller ones, obviously because they draw more attention. As soon as internet marketers realized that they can get better response just by increasing the font size, large fonts became trendy!

Holistic approach

When internet marketers were trying to bombard their content with keywords, universal or blended search results came into picture and bang! The game rules changed! The search engine result pages (SERPs) now not only contain text but also are blended with videos, audio files, pictures, blogs and more. Holistic approach is hence adopted by web designers now just to keep pace with the twist and turns the search engines offer these days.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is basically storing the documents and software applications which an enterprise uses frequently, on a remote server rather than storing it on a local computer. This has given rise to a superb business model which lets the marketer create spreadsheets, presentation and text documents without any additional charge or subscription fee. You do not have to pay because it pays for itself by the ads, just like the free mail accounts.

For a successful internet marketing campaign, the marketer needs to be able to combine complex business technicalities with his creativity to engage target users. It is not limited to crafting content in terms words and pictures but also finding innovative ways to reach out to audiences.

Impact of Low Cost Hardware on Business

In a typical business scenario whenever you need more computing you would probably ask an IT guy to install more systems in to the server room. There are chances that your resources are not utilized properly.

Only at some peak hours your requirement for resources will spike and else it will not be wrong to say that your resources will be wasted.

What is Cloud Computing?

Let us understand cloud computing with help of an analogy. You visit a restaurant and order a buffet meal. If you do not have a good appetite you are wasting unnecessary money for food which you will never eat. In this case it is sensible to order an a la cartè meal.

Similarly, if your appetite for resources is also low instead of buying entire systems it is wise to just pay for the amount of resources you utilize.

Cloud computing is taking services of specialized firms for your computing needs where you just pay for what you consume.

These specialized companies are selling computing resources like CPU cycles, disk space, etc. instead of selling physical hardware. As a user you do not buy the server, instead you pay for what you use.

It is often a good choice to cut down costs by not overpaying for acquiring expensive hardware as well as ongoing costs of maintaining it.

The most common example of a cloud is Amazon’s S3. Amazon sells online storage space. Here you do not pay fixed charges for amount of space or transfer per month. The costs are variable depending on the space you use and data transferred off the server.

In simple words, these resources are metered. For example 3 cents are charged for a query to a web service or every search in a database.

Here is an interesting Infographic that will help you understand the concept better.

Via: Wikibon.org