Tag Archives: business
What Firm Owners Need to Recognise About Cloud Computing
The Desktop Computing era has put computing power into the hands of the users, but left them still contingent upon IT to provision the back-end infrastructure such as networks, servers and firewalls. Maintenance on in-house infrastructure tends to be daunting and very costly. Whats more, disaster can ensue at anytime from drive failures, viruses, corrupt databases, server patches and the list goes on. You also need to pay for all the hardware and a team to manage it. Since application servers tend to be driven by departmental budgets, IT infrastructures often finish up as over provisioned mishmashes of equipment, processes and technology entailing overstated cost and large inefficiencies with servers operating at 15-25% of capability. Cloud servers, on the other hand, run at 75-90% of capacity. This results in less office space, hardware, staff and power necessities saving a lot of money, and the environment.
Fundamental to the Cloud Computing argument is that software is rented rather than purchased outright. Finance directors will immediately draw a comparison between the two routes and demonstrate that after typically 2.5 or 3 years, the rental payments on exactly the same resources would look to exceed the capital cost: it would thus make little sense to accept a rental agreement.
While that break-point may be right at first view, Alex Parker of Commensus reasons that there are noteworthy considerations to be taken into account. “It assumes that any equipment bought is being fully utilised from the outset. If a company has acquired IT solutions with the capacity to take it forward three or five years, for instance, it is paying for resources on which it cannot generate a return on capital. Changed circumstances may mean that the capacity is never fully taken up.”
Cloud Computing offers the chance of moving most IT expenditure from the balance sheet to the profit & loss account. This in turn removes capital expenditure, cutting operational expenditure and gives small firms the budget predictability they need. IT departments can then concentrate on the front-end issues that will enable business survival and development.
With Cloud Computing, instead of making one capital commitment to buy the hardware and another to acquire pricey software, companies effectively rent both the hardware and the software, paying only for the resources that are really employed. So you dont pay anything when services are not necessary, doing away with unnecessary overprovision of resources to appropriate for occasional spikes in requirements. Businesses can go from 20 workstations to 80 and back to 50 again in the time it takes to authorise the online paperwork. This “pay-as-you-grow, save-if-you-shrink” model works out much cheaper in the long run.
In the past, it might take a business six to eight weeks to commission an application server. Now, computing power and storage space is becoming a commodity, bought when needed and scaled up when required. This dynamic resource management is enabling organisations to react faster to market shifts and acquire an advantage over their competitors. It is this agility and scalability that persuades most companies to venture into the cloud.
But Cloud Computing is more than an IT deployment. Moving into the cloud is a cultural shift as well as a technology shift. For IT staff, and particularly the chief technology and chief information officers, it requires a rethinking of their roles. 70% of time previously wasted on operational maintenance and upgrades is then available to spend focusing on business strategy. This allows a company to take advantage of new opportunities to innovate and grow.
Website Optimization And SEO Consulting Changes To Rank Better In 2012
The New Year is fast approaching and it is this time of the year when most people make resolutions to make changes in their lives. That makes it a perfect time to think about your website and the changes it may need to compete with all the other businesses in this fast paced world.
If over the last year you have begun to see a decrease in views to your website and a drop in business, quite possibly this is because your website has not kept with the changing trends in search engines that began with Google Panda and now includes a growing reliance in social media chatter to decide what web pages should rank high and which ones lack exceeding low.
It used to be that website optimization was as simple as finding out what keywords were trending and using those keywords in your web pages. For outside links you simply needed to write an article to post somewhere else that linked back to the website and would bring in thousands of new visitors. Those things have now changed making it much more difficult to gain those Google rankings than ever before.
Website Optimization No Longer Is Dependent On Keywords
While using some keywords to get your web pages noticed by Google search engine is still important it is less important than it once was. Adding new and useful content that people find actually helpful is now a must with keyword density dropping to ½ or 1/3 of what it once was. In addition, it is more difficult to create back links as well because the search engines demand new and original content. The content farms have all gone or changed in order to meet Google’s changing demands.
In addition, with more people using Social media like Twitter and Facebook for business these days, search engines rely on these sites for back links to website looking for not only the frequency that your website is mentioned but also at who is mentioning your website.
What this all means is that your website needs to be updated to make the most of SEO and get you a better ranking in 2012. One way of ensuring that your website is optimized to rank better in 2012 is to hire a website consulting firm that has followed and understands the changes made to the search engine ranking and can help you to institute the changes your website needs to climb up those search engine ranks where it belongs.
If your business depends on your website to bring in customers and your site needs to be seen in order to perform that very important function it’s time to do some changes. The higher your web pages climb in search engine ranking the more notice your website will get, and the more business you will generate. So, now is the time to find that great SEO consulting firm that will be able to make the website optimization changes you need to get you better search engine ranking in 2012.