Cloud services need to have a much higher quality of work than their in-house equivalents if corporations are to take them seriously according to Steve Jones.  Read more...

There are a lot of advantages for small companies in using cloud services, but is that the case for large IT groups? Steve Jones has a few thoughts.  Read more...

A short interview with Sundar Raghavan of Amazon Web Services about SQL Server and their support and offerings of cloud data services.  Read more...

Google recently promised no limits to their computing engine online. Is that going to change how we use cloud computing? Read Steve Jones' thoughts and give us your opinion.  Read more...

There are some very interesting projects being performed with cloud services. Steve Jones talks about a few and the new computing without limits claim from Google.  Read more...

The cloud can be good or bad for your company, but it can easily be a costly endeavor that doesn't save you money. Steve Jones some data analysis is needed to ensure you have a cost effective cloud infrastructure.  Read more...

This editorial was originally published on Sept 11, 2007. It is being re-run as Steve is on holiday. This is an interesting look at the cloud from 2007.  Read more...

One of the areas where the cloud may have the most impact is with new infrastructure improvements. Steve Jones talks about a few companies that are using the cloud in different ways.  Read more...

Amazon now offers SQL Server 2008 R2 in their RDS service. It's an easy way to get working with SQL Server with a minimal investment.  Read more...

Learn how you can set up a new SQL Server instance painlessly on Amazon's Relational Database Service (RDS)  Read more...

Today Steve Jones talks about a problem in the cloud computing world: getting your data back.  Read more...

Phil Factor speculates on the damage caused to Cloud providers by the Amazon and Sony Outages.  Read more...

The outage at Amazon's Web Services recently affected a lot of different companies. However not everyone was affected. The reach of the cloud and the competition for attention means that while we have to learn to expect failures, they are not necessarily evenly distributed.  Read more...

More cloud talk today as the Air Force is building a new intelligence sharing system in the cloud? Why the cloud? Is the cloud really better?  Read more...

In this sponsored article from Cloudberry, learn how you can backup your SQL Server data to the Amazon EC3 cloud.  Read more...

Windows Azure and Azure Storage offers a new scalable and robust architecture that borrows much from the common feel of ASP.NET applications but brings plenty of new features as well. This paradigm shift from what has become traditional client-server architecture will offer new options to developers and headaches alike. While "the cloud" is not intended to be the answer for all applications and situations, it can only be a potential answer (another "tool" in the proverbial "tool belt") if you have at minimum a general understanding.  Read more...

With the proliferation of high availability & specialist online Backup companies, do we really have any excuses left to NOT have an offsite backup location, even if it is in the Cloud? Brad things not...  Read more...

Now, Internet-hosted distributed applications with connectivity to internal applications—often referred as Software plus Services (S+S)—are gaining popularity. Organizations are leveraging datacenters hosted by third parties to alleviate concerns about hardware, software, reliability, and scalability. These are just some of the new architecture trends that help you build interoperable applications that scale, reduce capital expenditure, and improve reliability. Cloud computing offers many of these benefits.  Read more...

Web Services has been a hot topic for a number of years now, but what, you may wonder, are these Data Services everyone's talking about lately? As the architecture of Web applications has changed and matured (with the popularity of Rich Internet Applications [RIAs], for example), there has been an increased awareness of the value of exposing raw data, minus any interface or formatting, to any service or application that wants to consume it.  Read more...

Steve Jones ends a "Week in the Clouds" with a poll asking if you might have changed your mind about using a cloud version of SQL Server.  Read more...