Why Does Cloud Computing Cost Less?

Cloud computing has been a buzz-word for several years now and is finally making its way into the conversations of entrepreneurs. Since 2011, Weehooey has had regular invitations to give talks on the cloud and its benefits. We wrote a post on this website over a year ago explaining the cloud.

We are regularly asked: why does it costs less in the cloud? Does it not use computers but just in another location? There are several factors which make cloud computing a lot cheaper than traditional on-premise computing.

Buying Servers In Bulk

When you buy in bulk, you save. By some estimations, Google is the fifth-largest server manufacturer in the world -- they have not sold a single server. Google manufactures these server identically and cheaply. These unsold servers power Google's data centers which in turn power their users' cloud applications like Google Apps. Below is a video where you can see inside one of their many massive data centers. 

Made for the Masses

In the video, you can see a UPS protected server being replaced by a technician in minutes. Think about how long it takes you to replace a server not just a UPS. A few days, weeks? It can take many hours just researching which server to get and how it will be configured. You get the idea -- your one-off, custom built server is expensive, labour intensive and slow to deploy. If you were having a server setup race, Google can have hundreds of servers setup  by the time a company can setup just one.

Optimized Operating System With No Licensing Fees

At Google, all the servers run a version of Linux that has no licensing fees and is optimized for their systems and the hardware it runs on. It is automatically installed and updated. Most small and medium-sized businesses run on Windows which is expensive to license and maintain.

Not Just Google

When you include, your hardware costs, licensing costs and, likely the biggest cost, your staff time, Google has on-premise servers beat by a wide margin. Even companies like Amazon and RackSpace who do not have the extreme setup that Google does, are going to be able buy, setup and maintain servers for a fraction of what you can.

Your Next Project

When you are planning your next step in your IT infrastructure, take a serious look at what you really need to deploy on-premise and consider what you might deploy in the cloud -- you will find savings. 

Envelopes for Google Docs

We are very excited to launch our first public web app: Envelopes for Google Docs.

The app allows Google Docs users to create envelopes -- until now that required a lot of messing around and wasted envelopes.

Developed entirely in-house, Weehooey's developer team used new features in Google Apps Script to achieve a conception-to-deployment time of less than 14 days.

Any user of Google Docs or Google Drive can install and use the app for from the Chrome Web Store: Envelopes for Google Docs.

With Google Apps Script, your company can automate workflows, link to internal databases and build useful tools for your employees and customers. Give us a call today to discuss how we can make your business more efficient.

Special thanks to Piotr Rauchfleisch of The Tall Guy - Design & Marketing for the professional design work to make our creation beautiful not just useful.

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GoToAssist Remote Monitoring Crawler will not authenticate credentials

When trying to setup a Crawler on a Windows Workgroup, the GoToAssist Remote Monitoring Crawler will not authenticate credentials for a Windows XP computer. You will get a message "Could not connect to 192.168.1.x: Access denied (0x800780005)" when you test the credentials.

GoToAssist Remote Monitoring uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and it requires Simple File Sharing to be turned off. To do this:

• Click Start → Control Panel → Folder Options
• Select the View tab and scroll to the bottom
• Uncheck "Use simple file sharing (Recommended)"
• Click OK

The Crawler should not be able to access the target computer if you have entered an Administrative user and password. Note: the account must have a password for WMI to allow access.