Computers in the cloud

The internet is always changing. With the changes come new cheaper, faster ways of doing things.

Cloud computing is the buzz phrase for having your applications and data living on the Internet. This is generally a good thing because it means that you can get at your business critical information from anywhere and because you no longer need to worry about backups, hardware failures etc.

With new services like Amazon's EC2 you can even build your own computer and install software on it in the cloud! A virtual computer, built on the internet can do pretty much anything a computer on the desktop can do.

Of particular interest to me is the fact that these computers can be used to host web applications, web sites and other applications such as automated foreign exchange trading.

As you only pay for what you use while you use it, EC2 is very cheap compared to the usual virtual server solutions or to renting servers at a data centre. For web servers that need to run 24/7 there is a reserved instance scheme that cuts the costs down to around $50 per month per small server. A small server can run dozens of typical websites.

With my cloud computers, I'm already running web site and web application hosting services for my clients that are faster and cheaper than those offered by the usual hosting services. There is also the added benefit that I administer the servers myself so backups and disaster recovery are included for free.

So far, I've been creating virtual computers on Amazon's EC2 service but I'm looking forward to trying the service that will soon be offered by Canonical because I'm a big fan of Ubuntu Linux and because this could offer even greater savings.