Once I update the content as well.

Using Cloud computing to your advantage

1. Business agility – add /remove or change resources faster than current IT infrastructure

2. Less initial capital expenses, also in accounting terms this is an operational service expense, not a capital expense requiring capitalization and depreciation guesses for technology

3. Automate your backups so that any person in company can recover files (reduce IT skillsets needed – check this collaboration miscommunication analysis by ACM - Association for Computing Machinery: ACM.org website )

4. Disaster recovery solved with online backups that are automated by Cloud provider

5. Use your desktop on any device (even old computers – keep using computers to fully realize their ROI)

6. Eliminate downtime – needs cloud provider strength, and multiple Internet connection ability.

7. New potential business models, using computing resources easily available allows for additional business possibilities

8. Keep Security of your IT data in mind - passwords are more important than ever.

Excellent Cloud Security Blog by Cloud Security Alliance: Cloud Security Alliance Industry Blog, this is definitely a blog you have to visit frequently as there are many updates.

CloudTweaks Blog Good blog about many a subject including cloud migrations here in this link:CloudTweaks link--- last post 2011.

Rick Blaisdell blog - currently discussing DaaS Rickscloud Blog --- last post from January 2013

Craig Balding created this blog and discusses cloud Security: Good Cloud Security Blog--Unfortunately a bit stale.

Intel Cloud Planning Guide:Cloud Computing Security Planning Guide

Forbes Cloud Security Article written by Emma ByrnesCloud Security Article

This is a Power Point about Cloud Security:Juniper employee cloud employee

TalkinCloud Forum - has the TalkinCloud100 top 100 companies in the cloud space: talkincloud 100 link

Gartner Quadrant Cloud market space:

The Gartner Magic Quadrant (top) shows the top 15 Cloud companies as per Gartner

I have placed the October 2012(left) and April (2013) next to each other for comparison.

Ecairn post about Cloud Security(image is also from the blog): Blog about Community Marketing

Iaas - Infrastructure As A Server companies:

An Infrastructure As A Server company - IaaS. IBM GoGrid and here is their Security Cloud link

A business Continuity Company:Ongoingoperations.com An interesting link about Cloud Computing What do I move to the cloud first? FAQ

SoftLayer has a free cloud server for 1 month

This way you can try their services On one server with one 2GHz core, 1GB of RAM, 25GB storage, 1TB of bandwidth, and one IP address.normally costs $50/month, but the first month is free.

This company(SoftLayer) is what is called an IaaS, or Infrastructure as a server company. Where at least 25000 companies have some form of their company IT services (according to TalkinCloud).

Etegrity a Backup company for Managed Service Providers

Rackspace has several Iaas offerings Rackspace about us link

Terremark is a Verizon cloud hosting company

Infrastructure and cloud service link: Infrastructure Cloud services

Datapipe an IaaS cloud company

Tier3 has a 99.999% SLA, also an Iaas cloud company

Atlantic.net has a 100% uptime guarantee excluding scheduled maintenance - Also an IaaS.

Rackspace has a 100% network uptime SLA. Also an IaaS

Codero has a 100% guarantee uptime excluding scheduled maintenance of cooling, computer hardware and network. another IaaS.

An Iaas company that is PCI, HIPAA, and SAS70 compliant: Logicworks tech specs offerings

A dedicated system is placed in a DMZ (or De-Militerized Zone) with managed Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), Log management, and daily penetration scans. For all patient data.

It is done using a private cloud server.

Another PCI, HIPAA and also FISMA compliant company: LayeredTech has many hosting services including providing 80% of all PCI compliance functions.

Looks like they started in 2004 as a managed service provider (MSP) , then in 2006 some cloud hosting services were introduced. - They are #9 in the TalkinCloud100 list (2012).

Tier3.com also an IaaS company, it seems that the company has a high SLA guarantee. There are many different levels of cloud services, including SaaS like Sharepoint or Exchange Server. There are a lot of potential services but no PCI compliance etc.

Dimension Data an IaaS company with 5 data centers around world - including Virginia and California in USA.

Levelcloud is calling itself a Master Cloud Service Provider, by trying to make the whole cloud experience easier.

Fujitsu is a unique IaaS: Fujitsu cloud

Fujitsu ServerView Resource Orchestrator Cloud Edition. Management software that delivers IT cloud infrastructure.
Fujitsu Primergy is server architecture on the x86 standard. A 10U chassis can house 18 server blades.

More IaaS companies:

Peer1 hosting is another up and coming hosting company in the Gartner Magic Quadrant

Website performance is enhanced with Anycast DNS.DDOS attacks are thwarted, 10Gbps network, and 24x7x365 monitoring is included in the service.

The tech support is supposed to be a direct call to your personal account manager, not help desks or junior techs.

There is also a blog which discusses the hosting co.

Interesting that this hosting company decided not to have an Asian presence.

Carpathia Hosting is one of the hosting companies that was added to the managed hosting Gartner Magic Quadrant this month.

there is something called an IBX Vault Data center located in Dulles, VA.
The "advantages" are:

1. Location - within 50 miles of Washington DC.
2. compliance - name the compliance standard, it is there.
3. Connectivity - multiple Tier 1 telecom carriers part of the Platform Equinix family.
4. services - multiple services

Personally, I don't see why being close to Washington DC is a great thing. It matters to me how close to the Internet NAPs one is instead of close to the capital of the USA. Of course this may be of importance to a company in the capital or Baltimore.

The Carpathia website does have a good explanation of PCI compliance

Naas - Network As A Server companies:

Limelight networks Limelight

Akamai Akamai

Cloud Migration company:

Racemi cloud migration link

Excel Micro - a google app migration specialist company

This company Toglcloud works through VAR's to sell cloud services, so keep that in mind, find out where the servers are set up? At their own facility or through a third party

DaaS - Desktop as a Service

Paragrid is a company that has 2 data centers that utilize BGP routing and mirroring which allows for 1 datacenter to go down andstill have the other operational.

Inetinc

Hosted Desktop, cloud servers, hosted servers, hosted exchange.

Uptime Systems

this company hosts your desktop and you can access it using a remote desktop session. There is a good demo worth watching: Uptime desktop demo

Dell Cloud Computing
Dell has Desktop as a Service cloud services, and not just Microsoft's RDS, but also Citrix Xendesktop, VMWare View, and Dell DVS Enterprise ISS.

Mindshift

The cloudSHIFT desktop is either a standard Microsoft Terminal Server- remote desktop session
Or a Citrix HDX connection, the Citrix client would allow a different type of customization

SaaS - Software as a Service

CSI mobile banking solutions

Computer Services Inc. was #6 in TalkinCloud100, and is based out of Kentucky. It looks like they focus on banking and financial institutions.

BCGsystems is a cloud company that sells Microsoft GP Dynamics software as well as Sage ERP, Office365, and Microsoft Lync (IM server software).

Traditional hardware and software companies that make a cloud from scratch:

RedHat's Cloud Computing Info

Intel Cloud Computing page