If you are interested in ways to make your business more efficient, then Cloud Computing may be just what you have been looking for. Cloud Computing can enable you to drive down the costs of your IT function. In Cloud Computing, data is no longer stored in-house and software applications will no longer be owned by your company.Instead, computing is shifted to a shared service provider. Once you adopt Cloud Computing, you will then be charged for use of software applications and data storage in the same way you are currently charged for electricity. In an era of tight budgets, the opportunity to make financial savings means that Cloud Computing looks especially attractive.If you have a Gmail account, you will already be using a form of Cloud Computing. Your emails are stored externally, and you can read them anywhere on your laptop or on your Blackberry. NetBooks are another instance of Cloud Computing. These devices are simple, with limited functionality, and the only apps are in the Cloud.Learn how to manage risk in the CloudFor Cloud Computing to be a viable option, you need to be confident that your business information will be secure and that the service you offer to your customers will still be reliable. So if you want to adopt a Cloud Computing strategy, you need to make sure you carry out due diligence on the service provider before you entrust this firm with your vital data.However, the author challenges the assumption that Cloud Computing will offer less protection to your data than relying on an in-house server. Cloud Computing not only allows you to make economies of scale; it can also offer you the increased security that comes from sharing the resource. The author argues that moving over to Cloud Computing can actually help to defend your organisation from threats such as denial of service attacks, viruses and worms.Making the right decisionCloud service providers will tell you that Cloud Computing is bound to be better, faster and cheaper. The reality is that before switching over to Cloud Computing, you need to think carefully about whether it will really work for your business. This book shows you what you need to do to ensure that with Cloud Computing you will continue to give the standard of service your customers require. It also offers you some valuable tips on how to choose your provider of Cloud services.Benefits to businessReduce operating costs. On average, in-house data centres use only around 10 to 15 per cent of available capacity. Because Cloud Computing allows users to share resources, the idle capacity is regained. As a result, you could succeed in cutting your operating costs by as much as 80 per cent.Focus on your core business. There are some tasks that your IT people will only have to perform occasionally. These jobs will be unfamiliar and therefore take more time to get done. When you move these extraneous operations over to the Cloud, your IT team can concentrate on the jobs that they do best and thus operate more efficiently.Save energy. Running a data centre normally requires heavy investment in power supply, generators and uninterruptable power supplies. By consolidating workloads on high-performance processors, Cloud Computing reduces power consumption and can therefore help you to cut your energy bills.Use software that is up to date. With Cloud Computing, software is rented in a package for all users of the service. This means that when new software suites are released, such as new versions of Microsoft Office, everyone in the Cloud will be able to use them from the word go.As the author comments, "e;The concept of shifting computing to a shared service provider is not new. What may be new is that the cost of Cloud Computing is falling so dramatically that considering outsourcing to the Cloud is no longer rare, and it is now accessible enough that any individual or organisation can use it to their advantage."e;