Thinking About Cloud...

I'm really inspired with cloud ideas since I first time met it. No doubt, that clouds are future of computing. I like the metaphor comparing cloud and electric power plant: "Last century if you plan your business depend on electricity, you have to afford huge and expensive electric generator - you have to host it, support it and do all maintenance stuff by yourself. You pay for everything by yourself, just to be able to plug one device. Then power plant come and electric wires covered a country, you no longer need your own electric generator, you can buy the electricity from power plant station. You pay only for that you used and it is much cheeper, since a lot of people using it together with you". Clouds are modern power plants - to be online you no longer need to buy servers, establish a data center, maintenance all infrastructure. You could by the resources from cloud services provider.

Clouds are about to change the business. It is much more easy to start-up new product in web, since you have to care only about product, not infrastructure. I knew some companies in past with quite good ideas, but those ideas buried under infrastructure complexity and expensiveness. And the clouds are about to solve that problem, microISV should be happy about.

I was thinking about all my current and future products are going to in cloud for sure. First and obvious point to look was Microsoft Azure. But after some elaboration I disappointed a bit:

1. Azure is overcomplicated. I'm not saying I'm not able to understand that.. But all those Roles, Processes, Blobs - it is just too much details. But what I basically waht is to place my existing working product into elastic space, that's it.
2. It is still expensive. This Azure price calculator, my simplest configuration would be ~50 USD/month. This is more than I currently pay for VPS.

So, I saw not enough reasons to switch immediately.

Yesterday, I've been contacted by Host1Plus company. They started out beta cloud in the new datacenter which is located in Frankfurt Main, Germany. And they are looking for beta testers of new service. The proposition looks really fine to me, since I could try the power of clouds and in the same time help a company with a feedback I could provide.

I'm going to join. If it is interesting for you, join with me. Here is some links that could be helpful:

• http://www.host1plus.com/press/beta-cloud-vps-will-be-launched-by-host1plus/ press release about it
• http://www.host1plus.com/beta-invitations/ mailing list for all the beta testers who wants to join the campaign
• http://www.host1plus.com/forum/ the community forum where all beta testers can join to start the discussions