Who is ExaGrid?

ExaGrid is the best disaster recovery and disk backup software you’ve never seen.

ExaGrid systems sole product, ExaGrid is a revolutionary data Deduplication software that is lifting the burden of DR plans and backup solutions off the weary shoulders of IT directors all around.

In a nutshell, ExaGrid sits behind existing backup plans and instead of backing up every piece of information every day, ExaGrid only stores unique data, making small footprints on the disk, and effectively reducing prices. Deduplication is a commodity that enables you to use disk instead of tape, and makes data back-up more efficient. In addition to providing this service, ExaGrid provides back-up on disks at the cost of a back-up on tape that is easy to manage, install, and support.

ExaGrid provides companies with a short backup window that allows them to spend minimal time away from production. ExaGrid also gives companies reliable backups and lightening quick system restores. With overall company data growing thirty percent a year, back-up and disaster recovery plans cannot continue to be ignored. Without these two plans properly implemented, years of data can be lost in the event of a catastrophic technological failure; this would not if ExaGrid is on the job

ExaGrid allows writes data strait to disk at its fastest possible speed. Once this is completed, the Deduplication is done, minimizing down time and maximizing company efficiency.

To learn more about this exciting technology, check out www.exagrid.com. If you are interested in implementing ExaGrid solutions, contact me at jcarretta@thetnsgroup.com

Joe Carretta

P Please consider the environment before printing this email.

Big News on the Search Front

Let me begin this blog by saying that it is not my intent to mention Microsoft in every blog. This blog was created in order to keep a tab on the latest and greatest on the technology front.

Having stated this, I now present to you (surprisingly) Microsoft, in the headlines again today after penning a monster deal with the lesser known player in the search party game, Yahoo.

Front page on the NY Times website this morning was the headline announcing the Microsoft-Yahoo pact. The agreement differs from last year’s deal, where Microsoft bid $47.5 million to buy Yahoo. That hostile offer was ultimately rejected by Yahoo, and its collapse and the uncertain aftermath for the Web company led to a management change and the replacement of its co-founder Jerry Yang by Carol Bartz, an outsider who is now Yahoo’s chief executive the Times article said.

Under the pact, Microsoft will provide the underlying search technology on Yahoo’s popular Web sites. The deal provides a lift for Microsoft’s recent overhaul of its search engine, renamed Bing, which has won praise and favorable reviews, after years of falling further and further behind Google with updates to Windows Live, and Windows 7.

For Yahoo, the move furthers the strategy under Ms. Bartz to focus the company on its strengths as a producer of Web media sites, from finance to sports, as a marketer and a leader in on-line display advertising that accompanies published Web sites. The terms of the 10-year agreement call for Microsoft to license Yahoo’s search technologies, and Yahoo will initially receive a lucrative 88 percent of search-generated ad revenue.

Aside from the interior logistics of the deal, the merge is setting the stage for a showdown between megalith Google, who currently controls over 80% of the search engine market, and Microsoft/Yahoo who now co-own the remaining share.

The deal gives Microsoft a chance to show off its new search engine prodigy child Bing. Despite good reviews and a genius marketing, Bing has not attracted many big time advertisers simply because Google dominates the majority of the search engine traffic. By tripling its usage through the alliance with Yahoo, Microsoft has a better shot at luring more advertisers, which, in turn, helps the company increase the revenue it earns from searches.

As with most Microsoft initiatives, this one can only be analyzed in time. Taking on Google is like trying to build a snow man in Mexico, but Microsoft’s newfound drive to conquer every market they can makes me think back to an adage coined (after translation) by Kevin Garnett after winning an NBA championship, “Anything is Possible”.

Go get em’ Microhoo

Joe Carretta

Microsoft at IT Again

One cannot argue with the fact that this summer has belonged to one brand; Microsoft.

With the releases of BING, HyperV (Microsoft’s virtualization software, all of which can be read about here), and a revamped ad campaign against Apple (The controversial “PC hunters” spot which caused backlash from apple execs).

Microsoft has kept itself in the news, and on the hunt for new business opportunities. With Gates stepping down supposedly by the end of the summer, Microsoft seems to be attempting to brand itself as “in” and shedding the glasses and plaid sports jacket image embodied by Mr. Gates.

Microsoft’s latest venture involves following the way of apple and opening a chain of retail stores, with execs saying spots adjacent to their competitors will not be shied away from.

This article on channelregister.uk said Microsoft is keen to push its Surface and Windows 7 technologies, as well as other pushes from this summer by featuring them both prominently in the proposed store plans.

Microsoft has also tagged onto Apple’s Genius Bar concept, though the jury appears to still be out on what moniker to use. Answer Bar, Guru Bar and Windows Bar all feature in the Apple presentation.

In February Microsoft hired Wal-Mart veteran David Porter to head up its retail push. According to, CNET Microsoft will tentatively dip its toe into the feet-on-street market by opening up several stores, some of which will be on Apple’s doorstep, later this year.

The move bodes well for Microsoft, but I am remaining skeptical. Whereas Apple has fun hands on gadgets like the iPhone, the iPod, and serves customers in an amazing technologically savvy store with a “Genies Bar”, Microsoft offers more mundane products. For some reason I just cant see people getting excited to go into the Microsoft store and play with the new features on MS Word, or see how great some new Microsoft software is. Not only will they not understand the complexities of the upgrades, but they will not attain the same thrill from playing with overpriced little white boxes that do everything but brush your teeth and make you breakfast (an iPhone was being referred to there).

Being a proud PC user, I would love to see Microsoft succeed here, and they very well could since they do have some exciting new products, and are (I think) successfully appealing themselves to younger generations such as my own.

Only the future will tell how Microsoft does; my prediction is not quite as popular as the Apple store, but a big step in the right direction for the evolving computer giant.

Joe Carretta

VM Ware Conference at the Javits

Yesterday, I was able to attend the VMware conference at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. The event brought affiliate vendors such as Compellent, together with prospective and current clients. The event provided a showcase for VMware’s latest application, VSphere, as well as VMware’s entire line-up of virtualization and cloud computing software.

VMware vSphere is the market leading virtualization solution that allows you to turn your infrastructure into an efficient and flexible internal cloud, enabling users to decrease capital and operating costs, run a greener datacenter and reduce your energy costs, control your application services levels with advanced availability and security features and streamline IT operations and improve flexibility.

VMware manufacturers have developed virtualization applications that are amazingly easy for the end user to navigate and operate. The user experience can be readily customized and businesses can save on the costs of training employees – VMware can be used immediately without the need to teach employees on how to use the application. In the end, the Virtual Desktop application is specifically designed to increase the capabilities of existing computers with little to no interruption in a business’s work flow and productivity.

On the cloud computing front, VMware is able to transform your IT infrastructure into a private cloud—a pool of virtualized resources within a data center, or internal cloud, federated on-demand to external clouds—delivering IT infrastructure as an easily accessible service. This cloud model enables IT to best align the service level agreement and the infrastructure to the needs of the business and the applications. This gives IT the cost savings seen from external clouds, with the security, compatibility and control needed for the enterprise.

VMware shows immediate return on investment, and is a perfect fit for any company who is tired of being bogged down with constant IT problems. VMware solutions allow your company to stay productive round the clock, and always be ready to close when opportunity calls.

For more information on VMware, see our website, or contact me at jcarretta@thetnsgroup.com

Microsoft Putting the Pressure on VM Ware

On Monday, Microsoft made a surprising move by submitting a driver source code for inclusion in the Linux kernel under a GPLv2 license, networkworld.com reported. Microsoft said the move will foster more open source on Windows and help the vendor offer a consistent set of virtualization, management and administrative tools to support mixed virtualized infrastructure.

According to an ITnews.com article reported By allowing greater ability to run Linux on the Hyper-V virtualization platform, Microsoft is making a compelling case that it could be the virtualization vendor of choice for consolidation of Windows and Linux applications, says Gartner analyst George Weiss.

The move is a direct shot at VMware, the market leader in virtualization. Virtualization can dramatically improve the efficiency and availability of resources and applications in your organization by removing the old “one server, one application” model and placing it all on an automated datacenter, built on a VMware virtualization platform. lets you respond to market dynamics faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Microsoft's big Linux push Monday involved the submission of driver source code for inclusion in the Linux Kernel, which will provide the hooks for any distribution of Linux to run on Windows Server 2008 and its Hyper-V hypervisor technology. Hyper-V's support of Linux-based guest operating systems was previously limited to several versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Microsoft provided integration components and technical support to customers who wanted to run SUSE Linux.

With another major move, Microsoft is continuing its full frontal assault on… everyone. Between Windows Vista, the PC Hunter Ad’s (which caused backlash over at Apple), BING (read our previous blog posting to get your BING game up), and now a move into the virtualization market in an attempt to overtake VMware with Hyper-V.

While VMware still has the superior product, they cannot lay back and watch the Microsoft machine to step on their toes. As any growing technology company, VMware cannot be satisfied with their current market stronghold. They must evolve along with the industry, and offer new and innovative services at competitive prices before they are pushed out the door by hungry competitors gunning for a slice of the virtualization pie.

To learn more about virtualization, and why your company should be running on virtualized servers, check out The TNS information page further detailing the countless benefits offered by virtualization.

Away Wii Go?

Nintendo Wii has revolutionized the video game industry. By taking a once passive experience and thrusting the player into the game not only mentally but physically, Wii has opened a whole new demographic to market their product.

For those of you unaware, Wii is all about motion. Instead of hitting x and watching your player hit a home run, you actually have to wave the remote around like a bat and hit it out yourself. Great game for little kids right? Wrong.

Wii has brought about Wii fitness, attracting middle aged moms not too keen on exercise, and decided not to stoop that ball of Wii remotes and wires from rolling. Nintendo now has guitars, steering wheels, microphones, guns, ax’s, and classical instruments and just came out with a car light that allow you to play Wii on the go; now that is a scary thought

Nintendo has lost control of the runaway Wii train. With gadgets ranging from upsurd to just plain dangerous, Wii has taken a great idea (bringing youth off the couch but not away from their product) and placed anyone within striking distance of a Wii and an excited youth (or adult) is danger. Below is an excerpt from a list compiled by Tracy John over at wired.com (check them out for the item images) with some signs of a Nintendo led apocalypse.

1) Wii-Bowl

2) Wii Boxing Gloves

3) Wii Dual Glow light Sabers

4) Classical Instrument Set

5) Wii 8 in 1 Action weapons Bundle

6) Wii Car Light

Check out the article here, complete with images and some non-Nintendo products sure to bring chaos to a living room near you.

Joe Carretta

Lets Get Virtual

Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this blog entry, I have complied information from the website of a TNS affiliate, VMware. In order to understand why virtualization is such a hot topic today, you first must understand exactly what it is, how it’s done, and why it is so hot right now like Derek Zoolander

What is Virtualization?

Virtualization is a proven software technology that is rapidly transforming the IT landscape and fundamentally changing the way that people compute. Today’s powerful x86 computer hardware was designed to run a single operating system and a single application. This leaves most machines vastly underutilized. Virtualization lets you run multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine, sharing the resources of that single computer across multiple environments. Different virtual machines can run different operating systems and multiple applications on the same physical computer. While others are leaping aboard the virtualization bandwagon now, VMware is the market leader in virtualization. Our technology is production-proven, used by more than 130,000 customers, including 100% of the Fortune 100. The VMware virtualization platform is built on a business-ready architecture. VMware virtualization works by inserting a thin layer of software directly on the computer hardware or on a host operating system. This contains a virtual machine monitor or “hypervisor” that allocates hardware resources dynamically and transparently. Multiple operating systems run concurrently on a single physical computer and share hardware resources with each other. By encapsulating an entire machine, including CPU, memory, operating system, and network devices, a virtual machine is completely compatible with all standard x86 operating systems, applications, and device drivers. You can safely run several operating systems and applications at the same time on a single computer, with each having access to the resources it needs when it

This is why virtualization is picking up speed. It not only presents immediate ROI for company executives by recouping energy costs, but allows information to flow more efficiently and be accessed whenever an employee needs it. Instead of running all applications on individual servers and crossing figures that one doesn’t crash, a virtualized server can run multiple applications and eliminates worry for IT managers.

A recent NY Times article discussed PrimaCloud, a cloud computing and storage product that offers a service-level agreement that it claims delivers 99.99 reliability (that means it can go down 53 minutes each year). The article reported that PrimaCloud said it will save $1 million by virtualizing its network and will spend 50 percent less to deliver its high reliability cloud. The company has installed boxes from Xsigo Systems that sit between the servers and switches and create a cloud through which the network traffic from the virtual machines loaded on the servers is routed. The network can handle traffic destined for other servers or for the storage network without requiring separate cables.

Virtualization is one of the many services offenders by The TNS Group. A full section of our website is devoted to virtualization. If seeing immediate return on investment, lowering energy costs, and allowing your business to run like the well oiled machine it is sound intriguing to you; check out our website and learn more about virtualizing your business. You will not be let down.

Joe Carretta

Good News on The Home Front

In what has been a slow year of economic recovery, one very loud and opinionated talking head of the finance world declared some very good news for the technology industry on his show last night.

Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s Mad Money, pegged Compellent (watch the video here, starting at the five minute mark to hear about Compellent) on his 52 week high list on a recent show.

Compellent is a network optimization and network security provider, with a strong focus on delivering products that are simple to deploy, easy to maintain and deliver immediate ROI. Compellent provides tools that ensure the optimization of network performance and the fulfillment of the rigorous audit and compliance standards imposed on today’s organizations.

Cramer made various points about why Compellent will be a smart buy for investors right now. He said the market will grow ten percent because Compellent has been able to carve out a niche market with small to midsize companies. Cramer said data storage is a service all companies need, and that complement is able to provide for second tier companies at a very affordable price. This affordability is rooted in the claim that Compellent can save companies over fifty percent of system cooling costs due to its efficient and effective operating system, which optimizes searches and all but guarantees the company a great degree of growth potential and earning speeds.

Compellent competitors offers additional storage vendors promise to reduce the amount of time and money spent on storage, but instead deliver a patchwork of complicated and inefficient point products that are difficult to learn, integrate and manage.

By starting from scratch, without the burden of software legacy code and the limitations of a proprietary hardware platform, Compellent developed an innovative SAN that reduces storage costs, cuts storage administration time, and provides continuous data availability.

To learn more about this fast growing company, and the outstanding and affordable services they provide, comment on the blog, or e-mail me at jcarretta@thetnsgorup.com.

Jonas Brothers and Cymtec

So last night I was obligated to take my thirteen year old sister to a concert featuring the Jonas Brothers, Jordin Sparks, and another band of dudes running around in tight jeans playing three power chords the whole time. Needless to say it was less than enjoyable but sparked an interesting idea concerning one of our favorite products…Cymtec

Let’s take a traveling sham… I mean act like the Jonas Brothers. The Jonas Brothers are more a commercial entity than a band, and have been able to push their images onto countless items from lunch boxes to pajamas. In order to promote their image and keep their ticket prices soaring higher and higher, the Jonas brothers executives have a need to monitor exactly what is getting done in their satellite office seamlessly from the Disney channel home office in sunny south Florida.

How do they do that you ask? The answer, my friendly readers, is Cymtec.

Cymtec Sentry is a product designed to allow seamless integration between parent and satellite offices. Cymtec gives companies the ability to remotely manage, troubleshoot, and optimize branch offices. Cymtec gives you real time bandwidth analysis and is focused on delivering products that are simple to deploy, easy to maintain and deliver immediate ROI.

Cymtec provides tools that ensure the optimization of network performance and the fulfillment of the rigorous audit and compliance standards imposed on today’s organizations.

If this Cymtec software sounds like it would be a great fit for your company, contact me at jcarretta@thetnsgroup.com or comment on this blog and I will personally get back to you and answer any question you could have about this product. (Actually I might have to find someone to ask, but I’ll get the answer none the less).

I know if I was managing a multiple location corporation, Cymtec would be on the top of my summer wish list.

How Much is Facebook Really Worth

Everyone knows Facebook, (mostly) everyone has Facebook, but do you know how much the social networking mega giant is really worth?

The last benchmark number we have seen concerning Facebook was the $240 million investment Microsoft made in the still privately held company.

CNET.com makes an interesting argument: Facebook's perceived valuation keeps climbing and climbing and climbing right up to its 240 million investment by Microsoft. It's not until, perhaps not coincidentally, the departure of chief financial officer Gideon Yu and the stronger likelihood of a new investment round that Facebook's valuation starts to climb again.

The company’s main problem strikes a chord in the heart of YouTube big cheese’s as well. The company has no problem getting eyes on its website, but is struggling in their ability to generate revenue. Think about the number of times you go on that site vs. the number of times you click on an advertisement. Most of them seem pretty dull, and with the risk of malware and viruses hiding around every click, users are even more tepid then usual about visiting an unknown third party site.

This fact makes investors (while still in office, Yu tried to drum up investments from Dubai, as well a large Russian communication company, Digital Sky Technologies, which eventually invested $200 million in the company) weary of putting their money into a company with no definitive business model.

Despite the companies flaws, the sheer number of users, and the fact that Facebook is so far out of the social networking league makes it almost immune to the criticisms dogging the company. In today’s business world, a platform that is able to dissect and target demographics as easily as FaceBook is an advertisers pie in the sky, and has them chasing after a slice of the 8 million people who type in www.facebook.com every single day. The article pegged the most recent figure at a $6.5 billion valuation, with each share of the common company stock going at $14.77.

In the difficult economic climate, Facebook has been able to supplant its competitors, evolve over time, and say no to household Internet names (Yahoo, Microsoft, the first time) and is being rewarded with big money investments in what still remains a murky future for a company that is arguably, still trying to find itself.

A Look Into the IT World

Technology has taken us further than ever in the past decade. The internet, introduced here by Tom Brokaw, has come a long way since its inception. It is now the single most important aspect of any sustainable business, let alone society as we know it today. Think about what would happen if you couldn’t use internet for a whole day. What a scary thought.

Despite the ever growing importance of information technology, an article from Between the Lines discussed the lack of continuity in companies' IT budgets as the world slogs through one of the biggest economic downturns in recent memory.

The article stated that a handful of companies—Dell, Infosys, Red Hat, Oracle, and Lawson—have already pulled back on technology budgets amid an unstable and unpredictable market economic picture. The common denominator here is that IT budgets fluctuate along with the stock market. Financial giant Goldman Sachs predicted an 8 percent decline of global IT spending followed by a 2 percent gain in 2010. Other research outlets such as Forrester and Gartner have been cutting their spending projections, but remain more optimistic than Goldman Sachs. To say these projections are moving targets is quite the understatement.

For company executives, it is difficult to justify a major expense for a technology upgrade when profits are shrinking and budgets are trimmed on a consistent basis. However, exploring new projects with a reliable IT company is a smart, long term decision that execs cannot be scared to pull the trigger on.

Take virtualization for example; upfront, there is an obvious cost. However, by reducing energy consumption and ensuring that your company will be online and ready when the big deal has to go down can create unimaginable gains for any business. This kind of long term gain is readily available for a company ready to move to the next level.

For corporations large and small, the question shouldn’t be if are they upgrade their IT services, but when and how they are going to celebrate once they see that number on the bottom line start to swell.

If It's Not Broke...

While some of us are still getting used to the new version of Microsoft Office, parent company Microsoft has just announced an invitation only technical preview to the new version of the program your probably using right now.

An article on CNET said the release of the software will be limited. Attendees of this week's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, as well as the recent TechEd show, will gain access to the desktop versions of Office 2010. Microsoft has also been taking sign-ups via its Office 2010: The Movie teaser Web site.

The move marks another major move by Microsoft, who made a splash earlier this month with the release of BING, the company’s attempt to challenge market leader Google in the lucrative internet search engine industry. Microsoft has set the industry with their Office program, (which features Word, Excel PowerPoint, and Outlook) which runs in practically every office environment across the country.

Office 2010’s biggest upgrade will be the addition of browser-based versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and OneNote. Those so-called Office Web Applications are being demonstrated on Monday, but the technical preview of the Web apps won't come until later this year. For consumers, Microsoft plans to make the browser-based versions a free part of Windows Live next year, but hasn't decided whether they will include advertising. The applications which run in Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer are aimed at both expanding the number of Office users within businesses as well as holding the ground threatened by Google Docs and other Web-based productivity programs.

While the release of an updated version of Office always comes with pre-release hype, Microsoft must be careful not to deviate from its already proven template of the older versions of the program. Users who are familiar with the older version of Office, and are able to complete tasks quickly and easily while at the Office. The ability to quickly execute simple tasks with Office could easily be lost with the new upgrades, and core changes to the system.

It is understandable that Microsoft wants to continue to expand its empire and provide its customers with the best possible product they can. However, in an effort to do this, Microsoft is running the risk of alienating its current customers by continuing to change applications that seem to be doing just fine as is.

Google: Next Level

Everyone knows that when they hear “tech news” it is going to somehow be related to or compared against search engine and advertising giant Google. Google has become more than a common household name. Google is most traditionally used as a noun. Nouns are most simply classified as persons, places, or things and Google is the last one or the last two (for now). However, Google has quickly expanded into a verb as well.

How many times a day are you stuck trying to remember something and just say “Oh forget it, I’ll just Google it!” Or you are speaking with a friend about who was on the cover of Madden 2007 and you can’t recall. “Oh man, I can’t believe I don’t know that! I am Googling that as soon as I get to a computer.” I can even one up that one. You and a friend are arguing over the release date of an upcoming movie while driving on I-95 stuck in bumper to bumper traffic; “Dude, I know you are wrong! I am Googling that right now on my sweet new Blackberry!” The giant known as Google had become a part of everyday speech as a noun and a verb. I am slightly surprised that Googling is currently underlined as a misspelled word right now. How could that not be in the dictionary yet?? Give it a month or two.

But back to the topic here: Tech news and Google. Same sentence. What’s the buzz this time? Google, late on Tuesday night, said that it plans on releasing its own OS. For less tech savvy people this not a new flavor of Ocean Spray fruit juice, but a computer’s Operating System. That’s right, Google is creating its own OS. Starting as a new search engine it overthrew every competitor in its way. Then it went to online advertising. After that it has demolished all competition in Maps, directions, videos (heard of YouTube anyone), shopping news, and of course email are all in a day’s work for the people at Google. Then they came out with their own web browser Google Chrome. And with Chrome, light bulbs went off; Chrome The Operating System. It sounds like a super uber awesome Transformer. Probably would have made the second movie better if there was a Google-bot. But then again it might take the excitement out, because we all know who would win. Mark my words though; Transformers III: The Rise of Googletron.

Okay, OS I know. Chrome OS. What’s the hype all about? First of all its free. That’s right, its FREE. Second, it is planning on competing with Microsoft Windows. This is no slouch system. Google doesn’t take the back seat to anyone. It’s go big or go home at Google. FREE and competing with Windows. That should be enough to turn heads. But there is more. Google is going to revolution the OS by making it extremely web focused. All the current OS’ predate the internet and Google believes that web browsing is at the heart of all computer use, so why not have an OS that runs like that. Using ‘Cloud Computing’ (if you don’t know what that is read the posting below this one for insight) Google will revolutionize the OS world creating a glorified Google docs system that allow you to store files and data in cyberspace and lets you access it from any computer. As Google unveils more stay tuned for updates. Or of course, we can always just Google it.

What Is Cloud Computing?

One of the newest Tech industry buzz words is cloud computing. The term has been rising on Google Trends, and has had blogs, twitters, and everything in between chatting up this concept that could potentially revolutionize the IT industry.

Cloud computing allows companies to keep all of their applications, data, and software on an imaginary “cloud” of internet space. For example; instead of installing a suite of software for each computer for employees, you'd only have to load one application. That application would allow workers to log into a Web-based service which hosts all the programs the user would need for his or her job. Remote machines owned by another company would run everything from email to word processing to complex data analysis programs.

Cloud computing has sparked much debate over its security, price, and degree of use. In order to place such a large and valuable chunk of information up into the internet stratosphere, a company would have to entrust it to an outside provider, most likely an Information Technologies company. A recent article on CNET.com discussed some of the debates currently raging around the concept, and how it will both benefit and hurt the push for innovation.

One major point of debate is how a large corporation (100 plus employees) and small to medium size operations can both successfully afford, and utilize the cloud.

The article discusses how the latter is looking to minimize cost and complexity as much as possible by eliminating the need to own things. For small to medium sized businesses, purchasing unnecessary software and hardware increases upfront cost, as well as maintenance and upgrade dues, and can be detrimental to the bottom line of the company. This marketplace sees the issue as outsourcing as much information technology as possible and is willing to place a high level of trust in providers to achieve that.

Enterprises, however, tend to be much more concerned maintaining their existing investments in IT while gaining a return on investment for new spending on new technologies or processes. A tremendous amount has been spent on making IT a trusted resource. Companies won't move forward on cloud unless they can maintain that level of trustworthiness without excessive expenditure.

Despite its numerous benefits to companies of all sizes, cloud computing remains just that…cloudy. Only further advancements will prove, or disprove just how effective the concept of cloud computing will be for the IT world at large.