Data on a Cloud

I recently had the opportunity to investigate the notion of developing a custom database application that could reside off company premises. Typically, there are three general classes involved with servers. First, what most company executives know, is to have your IT staff install a software package on your in-house server. The second is to rent space on a server in some server farm. Here you specify the operating system and the supporting layers of software, even before installing a database package. The third form is to find it already existing on some huge server farm that you may not be able to identfy... a.k.a. The Cloud.

Doing something as complex as defining a database still requires someone with Relational DataBase (RDB) know-how, a.k.a. me, but the savings and expertise required for the server and LAMP layering is reduced to $zero$. Lamp? That's Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl. A very common bundling of software to enable a web server and the software that sits in it such as SaaS (Software as a Service). Other acronyms exist such as PaaS, DaaS, DBaaS but we'll keeps things simple for today.

Anyway... the long and short of it is that computing in the cloud (Cloud Computing) is very economical, and its benefits in comparison to having one's own IT department have been validated many times over. I even have such a spreadsheet if anyone needs it. These packages typically charge a low fee by the month, often by user. Some have additional charges depending upon your need for additional features and disk space. Now, with these SaaS applications, I am not referring to the sharing of pictures or movies and the flashy commercials you see on TV. Though those, and Gmail and Live and Office 365 do constitute the cloud, they keep people from the real truth.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of SaaS applications worldwide and they do a myriad of weird and wonderful things. Virtually anything one could thing of. One references I use in searching for SaaS apps is www.GetApp.com.

Back to my database dilemma though. My search for a database engine in the cloud led me to a very capable product called Caspio Bridge. It's subscription cost was based on a per-application basis as opposed to the more pricey per-user model, so it suited our needs better. If this price model suits you as well, I have already weeded out the competition for you, so have yourself a good look. There are a host of videos that will give you the idea.