Cloud computing has become increasingly more prominent in the technology world.  More companies are creating online based applications like GoogleDocs or Microsoft Office 2010 to be used in the cloud.  It’s beginning to create quite the stir and as a small business owner, you may find yourself thinking about it more and more.  But do you know if it can actually help your business? Let’s take a look at the different dimensions of cloud storage and how it may change the way you run your business:

With Windows 7 as the highest yielding version to date, Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer caused quite the stir in the tech world recently with the unveiling of Windows 8.¹ Although it may sound like Microsoft is coming out with yet another update to their famous operating system, this one may break barriers for the company.  The most differentiating feature in Windows 8 is that it will support ARM architecture.

As mentioned in last week’s post, ARM (Advanced RISC Machine) is a more efficient version of RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computers.)² This means given the correct hardware, Windows 8 ARM has the potential of running faster and using less power all on a physically smaller computer.

“For the first 15 years of its life, the microprocessor improved its performance by an impressive 35% per year. As a result of research at universities and industrial laboratories, though, this rate increased in 1987 to about 55% per year -- a doubling of performance every 18 months! Had the prior rate of 35% been maintained, computers today would be only one third the speed we actually enjoy. Stated differently, it's as if we had been granted a wish to use the computers of the year 2000 in 1995.”¹

Massachusetts new regulation 201CMR17.00 has claimed its first victim - The Briar Group.  

I was having a chat session with one of our IT Consultants; he mentioned that a large part of provider/client relationship is the willingness of the client. Due to their size, smaller organizations (where IT issues arise more sporadically) don’t fully understand what they need from an IT provider. Instead, they usually put things off until they become an issue.