I posted several times about how I have not been hearing as much about cloud computing as I did a year ago.  Well, I think I’m wrong.  Lately i’ve been reading much about cloud services, SaaS (Software as a Service), hosted applications and cloud security.  In an update on Slashdot they remark about a story on stress tests on three big cloud platforms.  (I recommend normal people read the stress test article itself and techies hit Slashdot for the firehose.)

Amazon's cloud - EC2 - Elastic Computer Cloud

Google's cloud - Google Code App Engine

Microsoft's cloud - Windows Azure Platform

Some of the main points from the article, and issues commonly discussed regarding the cloud in general, revolve around availability, scalability and response times.  This article did not focus on the security aspects of computing in the cloud.  The three platforms evaluated are Amazon EC2, Google AppLogic and Microsoft Azure.  The gist of the article’s results are that “researchers have revealed that the infrastructure-on-demand services offered by Amazon, Google and Microsoft suffer from regular performance and availability issues.”

The take away for business owners and executives is that the cloud may not be all it was originally hyped to be.  A secondary point though, from Microsoft’s approach, is the availability of help in the transition or migration from your in-house servers, network infrastructure and apps to the cloud.

I mentioned yesterday in my post that security issues can often dictate a need for a hybrid based model combining a fully hosted cloud with your own private cloud.  The hybrid based approach to cloud computing means you get the best of both worlds: accessibility, remote access and scalability from the hosted cloud along with speed, control and security from your in-house or on-premise private cloud.  It is often the case that you need to filter through the technical details and marketing hype to get down to what makes sense for your organization and pull together a combination of solutions.  That’s why it’s always good to have trusted advisers to deliver the technical solutions that meet your business goals.