The growing popularity of the cloud computing platform raises many questions, such as "What exactly is cloud computing? And what are the unique advantages that cloud computing offers to companies in today's economic climate?"To answer these questions, we need to analyse the cloud computing infrastructure and its impact on some fundamental areas of IT, such as security, investment in infrastructure, application development, etc.

Most IT departments are spend an excessive part of their time on frustrating implementation, maintenance, and upgrade projects that very often don't add significant value to the company's bottom line. More and more we see IT teams turning to cloud computing technology in order to minimise time spent on lower-value activities, so as to allow IT to focus on those strategic activities which have greater impact on the business.

The fundamental cloud computing infrastructure has won over CIOs at some of the world's largest organisations— once-sceptical executives have never looked back after experiencing first-hand the variety of advantages inherent to cloud computing technology.

• Proven Web-services integration. Cloud computing technology is, by design, much easier and quicker to integrate with your other third-party or homegrown enterprise applications, whether they are traditional software or cloud computing infrastructure-based.
• World-class service delivery. Cloud computing infrastructures offer much greater scalability, full disaster recovery, and extraordinary uptime numbers.
• No hardware or software to install: a 100% cloud computing infrastructure. The best thing about cloud computing is its simplicity, which along with its significantly lower capital costs to get up and running.
• Faster and lower-risk deployment. With a cloud computing infrastructure you can implement your solution more quickly.. You don't need to spend months or years and millions of dollars before anyone can even log into your new solution. Cloud computing technology applications can be up and running within weeks, even with extensive customisation and integration.
• Support for deep customisations. Some IT professionals will tell you that cloud computing technology is difficult, if not impossible, to adapt to your needs, and therefore don't recommend it for complex enterprises. In fact, cloud computing infrastructure allows deep customisation and application configuration and keeps those customisations even during upgrades. What's more, cloud computing technology is well suited to application development, ideal for your organisation's ever-changing needs.
• Empowered business users. Cloud computing technology allows instant, point-and-click customisation and report generation for business users. So IT doesn't have to spend half its time making minor amendments and running reports.
• Automatic upgrades that don't impact IT resources. Cloud computing infrastructures put an end to an eternal IT dilemma: upgrading to the latest-and-greatest version of an application requires you to spend precious time and resources rebuilding customisations and integrations. Cloud computing technology completely eradicates this issue: you don't have to choose between upgrading or preserving all your hard work, because customisations and integrations are automatically preserved during an upgrade.
• Pre-built, pre-integrated apps for cloud computing technology. On the Force.com AppExchange you can find hundreds of applications built for cloud computing infrastructure, pre-integrated with your Salesforce CRM application or your other application development work on Force.com.

A Cloud Computing Infrastructure: What's the Value?

Cloud computing infrastructures and salesforce.com's Force.com platform have won over the CIOs of some of the world's largest organisations. These forward-thinking, security-conscious tech executives evaluated Force.com and realised the huge potential offered by cloud computing technology.

Salesforce.com frees companies from the unexpected costs, high failure rates, unacceptable risks, and lengthy implementations typical of traditional software. At the same time, it provides a comprehensive, flexible platform that meets the needs of businesses of all sizes, from small and medium-sized companies to the world's largest enterprises.

Salesforce.com minimises the risk associated with the development and implementation of an application. After all, technology should help solve business problems, not create them. With salesforce.com and the Force.com cloud computing technology, you can stop worrying about infrastructure requirements, maintenance, and upgrades, and be free to focus on solving strategic problems instead.

Cloud computing infrastructure also brings significant savings in admin costs—more than 50% in comparison to client/server software. Some areas in which cloud computing cuts costs are:

• Basic customisation. Force.com's point-and-click tools enable administrators and business users to perform basic customisations themselves.
• Real-time reporting. Easy wizards help users create their own reports and dashboards, freeing IT from requests for reports.
• Security and sharing models. The Force.com cloud computing infrastructure's inbuilt sharing model protects sensitive data while efficiently managing security profiles.
• Multiple languages and currencies. Support is included for 13 different languages and everycurrency, making managing a global application easier.

No wonder so many CIOs are choosing a cloud computing infrastructure for their companies.

Cloud Computing Technology & Application Development

Cloud computing technology is kick-starting a huge change in application development circles. In the same way that technology has moved from publishing on paper to bits made it possible for us to have information about anything in the world right at our fingertips in a flash, cloud computing architecture for application development allows us to build robust, first-class applications faster and cheaper.

The Force.com platform heralds a new age of applications in the cloud that bring the power and success of Salesforce CRM to all facets of your company—not just the sales, service, and marketing departments. Innovating applications is now possible through a combination of "no programming"point-and-click wizards, toolkits for creating client-side apps using the most popular development languages, and Apex Code, salesforce.com's programming language on the Force.com platform. Because the resulting applications will run natively on Force.com, developers reap numerous advantages.

• Cloud computing technology has all the benefits of multitenancy, such as built-in security, reliability, upgradeability, and user-friendliness.
• Faster application development is achieved with out-of-the-box features such as analytics, offline access, and mobile deployment.
• There are no concerns regarding the management and maintenance of any server infrastructure, even as applications scale to thousands of users.
• You can be part of a community of thousands of developers similarly focused on business application development for cloud computing infrastructures.
• The Force.com AppExchange marketplace on salesforces.com is an invaluable outlet for all your business application development and provides access to thousands of customers.

By removing the traditional problems associated with application development, cloud computing technology allows you to concentrate on developing business applications that deliver actual value to your business and your customers. The Force.com platform lets IT innovate, and avoids the costs and problems associated with servers, individual software solutions, upgrades, middleware or point-to-point connections—as well as the staff needed to manage it all.