Can You Rely On The Cloud For Your Business?
Cloud computing is all the rage these days. Every time you turn around you’re hearing something about how it’s the wave of the future and how it’s cheaper, better, faster, etc. For some businesses, the “move to the cloud” can be a good thing, but in other cases it can be a very risky proposition. You need to ask yourself – can your business rely on the cloud?
Recently, Amazon’s EC2 cloud server service went down for more than a day. If you are/were an Amazon customer using this service you lost service. In some cases you lost data and in some cases the data that was lost was NOT recoverable. Some major players in the social media landscape (Foursquare, Reddit, Quora, Hootsuite and Moby) were completely unusable. Additionally portions of CNET’s functionality was compromised. CNET’s response? “We’ll be back shortly, we hope. Sorry, it sucks for us too. We’d point fingers, but we wouldn’t be where we are today without EC2.” Read the rest of this entry
Small businesses (especially new businesses) often struggle with getting paid. Bank accounts, checks, credit cards, cash, etc. The payment options seem endless. For ease of use for the end user many businesses choose to accept credit cards. For a small business this can lead to some roadblocks as you typically need to have a merchant account, a payment gateway, etc. For the non web savvy out there this can be a daunting task. Luckily there is another way: 
