Hi, this is Bill Sikkens, host of User-Friendly 2.0, Saturday afternoons at five o'clock here on the Answer Portland with this week's Tech Wednesday. The majority of US businesses now have some form of cloud computing. What this is, is services like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Rackspace, Google, all offer different things plus a number of smaller companies to where businesses can put a portion or all of their IT infrastructure on the cloud. There are distinct advantages to doing that because it brings the cost of equipment down. You don't have to buy it, you don't have to upgrade, you don't have to maintain all that type of thing. But there are some disadvantages too when it comes to security and cost. Now, as far as the platforms are concerned, they have a lot more money than most small businesses do to make sure things are secure, but there are configuration and issues and stuff like that can pop up. The other thing is if you're not careful, it can become very expensive and it's very important to watch how much this is costing your business. For more details, check out User-Friendly 2.0 Saturday afternoon at five o'clock here on the Answer Portland.
