What is The Cloud

The Cloud is an umbrella term to explain a bunch of services that are hosted remotely for you, some of which existed long before the term The Cloud was coined. You’ve probably been using the cloud without realizing it. Ever had a Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo account? Ever had a website? (Very few people host their own website. Most of us rely on a web host, which is effectively a cloud service.)

Why the cloud?

Cloud computing has been a massive boon for both home and small business. Large business and government bodies (eg schools) also use the cloud extensively. Suddenly we can all call upon services in the cloud that replicate the expensive infrastructure services of Exchange Server and the like, with no maintenance woes or expenses. The cloud is cheaper and more reliable than many comparable infrastructure services.

The cloud is cheap, in many cases free or at a prices many times cheaper than setting up and maintaining your own services.

The cloud is reliable. That the sole failure of Google Calendar caused such a stir last year in some  ways proves how reliable it really is. It’s the exception that proves the rule. We all know that all computing services experience hiccups, shutdowns for upgrades, component failure etc. The cloud is reliable and safe, with service outages and data loss almost reduced to zero. Google have a 99.9% up time.

Cloud Services

Google Apps is the king of the cloud. With just this one parcel of services we can deliver cloud services for email, calendar and online documents. When Pogo installs a client onto the Google Apps cloud we do so with great knowledge of the various combinations of applications and configurations possible. The with Pogo the cloud exists to service your needs:

• choice of mail clients (Outlook, Mail, Mac Mail, Thunderbird)
• boolean filters (create custom filters for your organization, copy mail to folders, across email accounts, limit accounts, prevent external mailing etc)
• huge knowledge of apps that compliment Google Apps
  • CRM
  • document synchronization
  • contacts sharing and management
  • mailing lists

The Google Apps Marketplace grows by the day, with many more providers making Google Apps with various success and levels of integration. Rely on Pogo to keep on top of new apps and find the ones that best suit your needs.

Microsoft have a great range of cloud services, including Hotmail and Mesh. Microsoft have a long history in cloud computer (hello Hotmail) but have to a large degree built their empire on infrastructure services such as MS Server, Exchange, MS Office, etc. Windows Live Essentials is free and resource rich service for home and small business users. Microsoft extensive and feature rich services also exist for business of any size.

Microsoft Mesh has built on Microsoft’s Skydrive and is now the foremost tool for synchonizing files and folders across various computers via the cloud. Mesh can also be used as an automated back-up.

Pogo can use cloud services from various providers to put together a level of services that best suits your requirements.