Filed under Services

We received yet another notice of a major company abandoning support for Internet Explorer 6.X.  Salesforce.com, a customer relationship management system provided as software as a service (SaaS) indicated they are rapidly moving out of the Internet Explorer 6.x game. Salesforce.com follows other notable software firms including Google and YouTube.

In addition to joining this ongoing mass exodus away from supporting the IE 6.x browser,  Salesforce.com provided some great reasons that are relevant to every user of this dated and flawed software. Take note of their comments:

“There are several reasons we are ending support for IE6:

• IE6 is less secure. Multiple security vulnerabilities in IE6 have been exploited over the years. The most recent attacks against Google, Yahoo, and other companies specifically targeted vulnerabilities easily accessible in IE6 but much more difficult to exploit in IE7 and IE8—leading the Microsoft Security Response Center to recommend that users of IE6 upgrade to a newer version of Internet Explorer.
• IE6 is slow. Of all of our supported browsers, IE6 provides the slowest and least rewarding user experience for our customers.
• IE6 is a “last generation” browser. IE6 was first released in August 2001. As an obsolete, non-standard platform, IE6 is a difficult browser on which to develop and support the rich internet applications our customers have come to expect.”

Check your browser.  If you are viewing this post on IE6, it’s time to upgrade. This time you have choices.  In addition to IE7, consider Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.  You just might be surprised with what you find.

After work yesterday, I went to work. I joined up with 90 other people to practice our marketing craft. Here was the set up. A nascent organization, Windy City Social, was sponsoring a Marketing Challenge. Three business cases were presented and the crowd dispersed into nine teams to tackle the marketing challenges of each case. Pizza, beer, competition and collaboration at the Cubby Bear in Chicago.

The self-acknowledged un-cool General Motor’s Buick division challenged the crowd to help build a marketing program to bring the average age of their buyers down by about 20 years. No longer selling Electras and LeSabres, Buick’s  newest models were arguably cool enough for their target 35 – 55 market and they were looking for new ways to get the word out. Southwest Airlines, already in possession of the cool factor, desired to share their “bags fly free” differentiation with less frequent travelers. And for truly “cool” in the literal sense, the Chicago Special Olympics sought to grow participation in its Lake Michigan Polar Plunge annual winter fund raiser, now celebrating its 10^th year and having grown to over 1200 chilly plungers.

Teams had 90 minutes to consider the objectives, develop a plan and assemble a presentation. I joined one of the three Polar Plunge teams. Ten of us, having never met and with no appreciation for each other’s skills or background sat in a circle and stared at each other, perfunctory name introductions already forgotten. Go.

Amidst the cacophony of nine teams hammering out their solutions, our group’s leader, Daniel Honigman, filtered the input. Simple, he dictated and we responded by eliminating multiple affinity groups and market segments and focused on one. With that focus, ideas flowed and Daniel contemporaneously captured, structured and edited our draft into a rough PowerPoint. Stop.

Nine 5-minute presentations later we’d heard songs, monologues, skits, taglines and positioning statements. The business case sponsors voted and winners were announced. But actually, we all won as each of us refined and sharpened the skills we need in our day jobs including working quickly, effectively prioritizing, collaborating synergistically and presenting convincingly. It was a hard day’s night, but I had a ball.

Internal site search is one of those things that seems very simple: type in a term or phrase on a website, and you’ll get a list of results of pages on that site that are likely to contain what you’re looking for — very straightforward. Almost every site has search functionality built in.

It’s not quite that simple, of course, even though Google makes Internet search look like the easiest thing in the world.

What Do You Mean By Search?

First, there needs to be clarity on what someone means by talking about “search” — are we talking about search functionality within the website itself (ie, internal site search)? or are we talking about how people might search to find your site (i.e., external search)? There are approaches and techniques to deal with each type of search, and there is certainly some overlap between them, but they are very different issues. The information here is focused on internal site search.

Where Does That Internal Site Search Result Come From?

It’s important to understand where your search results are really coming from. Most searches are not done in real-time (that is, actually searching your website content at the time you put in your search term), but rather are running against a search index of some kind. A search index is a pre-defined, static pool of possible results. The value of a search index is that all the hard work of filtering for possible relevant terms, weighting relevancy, and optimization have already been done — so when a site visitor actually performs a search, it’s usually pretty fast and pretty on-target for what that person was looking for. The downside of a search index is that it’s a picture of your content at a particular time, so if that content changes (including adding content or deleting content) but the index isn’t updated, people won’t find that updated content.

There are some specialized searches that are done in real-time. For instance, many of Duo’s legal sites have specialized attorney searches that filter by office or practice area. Since these searches are running directly against the main content, they are always up-to-date — but they may not be as fast, and there’s no “results weighting” that can be done once the results come back.

Results weighting is also known as relevancy. It is a very important element to your search results. If you search for “dog”, you probably want those top results to be really focused on dog information. Search engines generally “guess” at that relevancy through a series of rules or parameters. For instance: is “dog” in the title of the page? Is it a term that’s used repeatedly in the body of the content? etc., etc. Very good search engines have been refining those rules for years now, but they rarely expose those rules to the public, since those rules are their competitive advantage.

There are, however, search engines that you can use that will allow you, as the website owner, the ability to tweak those rules to best match your particular content. Obviously the advantage of using one of these engines is that you have the ability to fine-tune your website’s search results. The downside is that this does require some effort, and that effort is ongoing — as your content changes over time, you are likely going to need to periodically revisit the rules you’ve established in your search engine.

Search Options

So on a practical level, what are your options for search? Listed below are some of the search options that Duo Consulting uses. This is not, by any means, an exhaustive listing of search options available. It’s just meant to provide a sense of the variety of options that exist.

eZ Search

eZ Search comes built-in with any site built on the eZ Publish Content Management System. Because it’s built into the system, you can control the frequency with which the site index is built. Thus, if you’re changing the content on your site quite often, you’ll have the ability to make sure that your search results will reflect those changes in a timely manner. There’s no weighting or relevancy, however.

eZ Find

eZ Find also works with the eZ Publish Content Management System. It’s built on the Solr open source search server, and it does allow for very fine-grained relevancy tweaking and options for indexing frequency. It also allows for searches to be done on an entirely separate server from the website itself — an important consideration if your site gets a lot of traffic and you need to consider how to decrease the load on your site as much as possible.

Drupal Search

Drupal, another Content Management System, also has search functionality built into it. As with eZ Search, it’s relatively simple and basic, although you do have control over how frequently your content is indexed. There are some modules (ie, Porter-Stemmer) that can be used in conjunction with the default search to raise the level of sophistication.

Acquia Drupal Search

Acquia is a commercially supported version of Drupal, and they have a search engine which is also based on Solr technology. It can either be used as an externally hosted service (billing is based on the volume of content), or you can use the module built by Acquia and set up a local Solr server. It offers relevance, author filtering (useful for sites using social media), term highlighting, and content recommendations.

Third-Party Search

Third-party search engines, such as Freefind or Google, can be seamlessly integrated into your website. You can retain the look and feel of your site, while at the same time leveraging the power of a search engine company that has already spent the time and effort to refine the relevancy rules. The search index itself, however, is something that you will only have limited control over in terms of indexing frequency and relevancy weighting.

There are a few things that you can do to guide third-party search engines. You can create sitemaps (essentially an XML map of your content that’s easy for search engines to digest), and some third-party search engines do have an on-demand indexing option.

Custom Search

A custom search is a search that’s so specific to certain content that it makes the most sense to custom-code it into the website. This often works for simple things (again, the example of filtering attorneys by office and/or practice area), and the search results are always up-to-date — but a more complex search result requirement begins to creep into re-inventing-the-wheel territory, so this should be used judiciously.

Things to Consider When Planning Your Internal Site Search Strategy

So having said all of this, what kind of search will work best for you? If you can answer the following questions, you’ll be well on your way to figuring out the best solution to fit your needs.

How much content will I have?

If you have a lot of website content, then you will probably need a more sophisticated search engine for the internal search on your site. If you don’t have a lot of content now, then certainly this is something you’d want to evaluate as the site grows — what works on Day One of the site launching may not be as useful a year later.

How much traffic will I have?

If your site has a lot of traffic, then you’ll probably want to consider moving the search traffic off to a server that’s separate from your own site, or a third-party search engine. As with content, this is a situation you’ll want to periodically re-evaluate.

How frequently will I want that content indexed, so that the search results are freshest?

Instantly? Hourly? daily? weekly? If your content must be 100% fresh 100% of the time, then you’ve narrowed your choices to search engines that you’ll have direct access to controlling the refresh time. That said, this is something to look at carefully — does it really have to be that closely in sync with real-time content updates?

How much fine-tuning and/or control do I want over the search results?

…and how much effort do you want to put towards that fine-tuning and control? If this is important for you (i.e., you want to make sure that content within an employee’s primary biography is weighted more heavily in search results than his or her community activities), then you’ll want a search engine that you can have that level of control over. On the other hand, it will mean a commitment on your part to invest in the time to experiment and tweak those settings, and that will probably need to be revisited over time as your content changes as well.

There are still quite a few nuances to talk through beyond this, but tackling these questions at the beginning will certainly get you most of the way there.

What About External Search?

If you are concerned about how public search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) will find your site, then you will be focused on optimizing your site for that: Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They key to good SEO for your site is good content, of course, but beyond that, Duo would be happy to speak with you about detailed approaches and strategies for your site.

One of the cool things about the internet is how it gets us closer to a frictionless economy where there are fewer channel constraints or information uncertainties. Or at least that’s what I remember from Econ 101. As a businessperson, it’s kind of scary. But it’s what is. What’s brought me to thinking about this is the most recent communication I received from Google, the Ubiquitous (GtU), about their AdSense advertising program.

Google told me that on my websites where I show (and get paid for displaying) their ads, they were now adding an additional network of “Google-certified” advertisers. This network of third-party advertisers would compete with the Google advertisers for space on my website page. And Google would award this space based on this: “the ad generating the highest revenue for publishers will be displayed.”

Say what?
If you don’t use the Google Adsense or Google Adwords programs, I might as well be talking to you in Martian. If you own Google stock and don’t know what I’m talking about, you ought to research the revenue model of your asset. However, if we’re still connected here, chances are you are a Google AdSense or AdWords customer.  I live on both sides of this coin. I have websites that show ads and I also bid on keywords for advertising space on other websites. Here’s what I’m thinking:

Google AdSense
If you put ads on your website and get checks from Google, you might be able to smile. Google has just increased the client base competing for a presence on your potentially valuable website page. Although website page inventory increases everyday offering increasing options for your prospective advertisers, now there is a larger pool of advertisers looking for – and bidding on – that space.  Congratulations, looks like a win for you.

Google AdWords
If I’m bidding to have my ads placed on websites, it seems to me that I’ve got more competition. It was bad enough that I had to bid for keywords against those ignoramus who bring their egos to the table and bid outside of any meaningful ROI. But now, I’ve got both the ignoramus and the slick automated RoboAgency to compete against. Sort of like simultaneously playing chess against a computer and a 5 year old. I suspect my Pay per Click bid rates will increase.  Bummer.

Today, in a separate article, noted search marketer Kevin Lee wrote, Ten Reasons you’ll soon spend 25% more on search.” He makes some great points having a similar theme but barely touches on this matter of inventory expansion and bid competition.  It will be interesting to see how the factors he identifies together with the upcoming moves by Google to increase the set of advertisers ultimately influences revenue flowing to publishers (AdSense) and cost to advertisers (AdWords).

I’m a big fan of bookmarklet bit.ly, a simple url shortener.

About the same time I became more active with Twitter I was also becoming aware of frequent references to website domains with prefixes such as TinyUrl, Is.gd, Tiny.pl, Rurl.org, bit.ly. and more. Turns out these little sprites of letters and dots are just more internet magic that can turn an ungratefully long website domain into something short and, if not memorable, well, at least, uh, short.

Of course, if you Tweet, a short website reference is beautiful because it leaves the balance of Twitter’s 140 characters to pontificate. But recently I inserted a short bit.ly link into a Facebook post where I had all kinds of space to post a big ugly web domain. I did this because bit.ly offers me two very cool advantages that go beyond merely being short.

Custom domain
When you post your ugly long domain into a domain-shortening tool, usually you get back something like http://bit.ly/161Efn. Although short, it is still kind of ugly. But bit.ly lets you customize your domain. So when I moved my Facebook group over to the new page I gave them the simple domain, http://bit.ly/IllinoisAudubon to get them to a location that would have looked like this: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Illinois-Audubon-Society/81846041882

Tracking
If you establish a free account with bit.ly, you can sign in and view the domains you create and the click activity on the link. So if you want to measure activity on a link you place in an environment you might not otherwise be able to measure, bit.ly can cough up that metric.

bit.ly Preview
Although not specifically part of the short domain tool, bit.ly also offers a plug in for your Mozilla Firefox browser that permits you to hover over a bit.ly url and confirm the true location to which your click will take you. This plug-in also work with many of the other popular domain shorteners.

I’m not shilling for bit.ly. And, even as I write this I’m aware of similar as well as different features from other domain-shortening tools.  So if there is any single take-away from these comments, simply be aware that bit.ly and some others provide you additional management and usability features that go beyond permitting you to squeeze your brilliant thoughts into a 140 character-limiting tool. Look beyond the obvious.

There is a lot of voodoo associated with search engine optimization. Much of it is urban legend and legacy mis-information still circulating from the 20th century Internet. And some of it is promulgated by ersatz search engine optimization (SEO) specialists seeking only to obfuscate the fact that their craft is often simple and uncomplicated. In truth,  SEO is really a lot of fundamental blocking and tackling; just doing the grunt work that can pay dividends.

This came to mind recently when I received an email from our business partner, email service provider ExactTarget. They had a simple objective, to improve their search engine positioning in a competitive industry.  And they were pursuing this objective in a professional and forthright manner.  It is something every website manager can do so I thought I’d share their process.

In their email to me, they noted that the Duo website currently has a link to their website. This is an existing link we created to illustrate our connection to business partners with whom we are pleased to be affiliated. It just wasn’t working as hard for them as it might.  They asked us to make two simple changes:

Create a Link to the Right Page
ExactTarget noted that we were linking to http://www.exacttarget.com and requested that we change that link to http://email.exacttarget.com. Apparently they’ve created this domain because it is more keyword rich. Both links go to the same page.  “exacttarget.com” doesn’t describe anything except their trade name.  But “email.exacttarget.” includes the keyword “email” which at least provides a descriptive keyword about some of what this firm does.

For ExactTarget, they determined that the correct page that I would want to refer my site visitors would be their home page. The only thing I would add to this is the importance of obtaining links to the most appropriate page on your website – and more often than not, that is NOT the home page but an important and more relevant interior page of the site. When you request links to your site, think about the page on which you REALLY want people to enter your site. Then provide that URL.  Whenever possible, drive them to the interior of your site, not your home page, unless the home page really is the most relevant page for your anticipated site visitor.  (Note – if you don’t have a good interior page for your targeted site visitor, consider creating one. But I digress).

Link Descriptive Words – “Anchor Text”
The second thing ExactTarget requested was that we include important keywords as either part of the link or in very close proximity to the link. To make this brainless for us as well as to insure consistency of their message they suggested we use the elevator-pitch copy, “ExactTarget delivers on-demand email software solutions for permission-based email marketing.” And then they suggested we actually hyperlink the keyword phrase “email marketing” to their requested domain.   SEO folks call these linked keywords “anchor text”

Linking the descriptive keyword to the domain sends a signal to the search engines that if you are searching for “email marketing” chances are you will find what you are looking for at the place to which other websites are already linking.  Think of it as pointing, or better yet, voting. If ExactTarget can get a lot of its partners’ websites to “vote” that the right place to go for “email marketing” is “email.exacttarget.com”, the search engines will respond by giving this website prominence for this particular keyword search.

So, for example, if you help people with developmental disabilities, but what you really do is provide pediatric therapy to children with developmental disabilities, seek out your trusted partners who will put the phrase “pediatric therapy” on their site and link that phrase back to the pediatric therapy services of your website. If you’re a lawyer who does tax planning in Grand Rapids, Michigan, request the phrase “Grand Rapids tax planning” be on your partners’ sites and link to a page specifically about your tax planning services.

As I said, the concept is simple. Execution is the challenge. It all comes down to getting the blocking and tackling right.  Is anyone from the Chicago Bears organization listening?

Good economy or bad, marketing budgets are always subject to scrutiny by business managers. Dollars are allocated to various resources and out comes…. what? A brochure? A well-placed article in a trade publication? A speaking engagement? Often it is a lot of feel-good stuff. And I’m not saying it doesn’t work – sometimes. But connecting the investment to the bottom line, what business managers like to call return on investment (ROI), is frequently a stretch. Or, at worst, it is a complete non-starter.  So here comes this Internet thingy which generates gobs of data on all aspects of its performance and what happens? For many marketers, this information is the elephant in the room.  We know it’s there.  We just choose not to recognize it. I’ve dubbed this Faith Based Internet Marketing.

Faith-based Internet Marketing is simply this: PRAY people visit your website. HOPE they find value when they are there. BELIEVE it will help business.

Faith, of course, is a cornerstone of many of our lives, where we have the wisdom to accept much which cannot be otherwise proved. But, really, it has no place in Internet marketing.  Clearly, you do not have to pray that people will visit your website. There are multiple strategies for influencing that outcome and countless tools for measuring your achievement. “Hope” is not an action step as much as it is a state of anticipation. If you are really concerned about site visitors finding value, and you better darn well be, examine your site’s content and method of content delivery to document that it truly provides value. And, again, measure your content types to know if they are being “consumed” as you expect.  And challenge the belief that all your investment of resources actually helps your business.

Most of Duo’s clients don’t sell stuff on their website. So connecting the Internet marketing dot to the meeting-the-business-objective dot is often the most challenging. I don’t have the magic answer to this dilemma. If I did, I’d write a book and not a blog post. One recommendation I often make is to imagine that you didn’t have a web presence at all. Then start identifying exactly what would be lost. Scarily, maybe nothing! But if you do identify that which you would miss, put a dollar value on it – and measure that, too.

If you take these steps, when the Grim Budget Reaper comes to visit, you’ll have the tools to defend your Internet assets – and possibly expand them. Keep the faith. But don’t practice Faith Based Internet Marketing.

Well-written content adds value to any website. Whether for business or personal use, a website should provide information that increases the knowledge store of the World Wide Web. A key benefit of expanding your website content is that it provides more terms for search engines to index. An additional plus is that websites that update more frequently often earn a higher rank due to their activity.

How does content get on your website? There are three simple methods:

• Write it yourself.
• Hire the services of other writers.
• Aggregate content from outside sources.

(Okay, there is a legendary fourth, which is to let a room full of monkeys loose on various computers and see if they can type the collected works of Shakespeare. But only the above three are practical.)

My post on the benefits of cloud computing is an example of the third option, exercised by the Cloud Computing Journal, an online magazine published by SYS-CoN Media that uses all three methods to increase their content base. What struck me about their method of content aggregation is that within minutes of posting the article, Jeremy Geelan, Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events, sent me an email requesting permission to reprint it, offering full credit and a bio.

This was unexpected, but refreshing. Websites that aggregate content usually do so by programming a script to search the web for content and post it to their site verbatim. The intent of this method is to increase their indexed content and drive their search engine page rank, but all it does is create a mess of noise on the Internet. Articles about securing your java application and enjoying a java chip mocha frappuccino don’t usually belong on the same page, but they might if they share the word java.

Even if an automated script could request permission from content authors before copying it onto their site, it would be difficult to automate a filtering mechanism that also ensures the content is relevant. Alternatively, a human being can review all aggregated content and apply their own site’s editorial guidelines to add value before posting it live. This is what set my experience with SYS-CON apart from the rest:

They Credit Their Sources

By offering to post links back to Duo Consulting and my personal/professional blog, they already received top marks in my book. One of my friends complains that his photographs are all over the Internet without any credit back to the source. His website explicitly states that he allows anyone to use his images provided they acknowledge where they came from. A simple email request could avoid creating bad blood between your organization and theirs.

They Edit Content to Increase Value

Since posting my article to the Duo Consulting’s blog, it’s taken on a whole new life. The alternate version sports a spunky new title and tag line:

The Three Salient Features of Cloud Computing: Accessibility, Availability, and Scalability: Cloud computing provides tangible benefits, available to users on request

Also, my closing paragraph is now at the beginning, which gives additional weight to my all-time favorite lines:

“…the availability of our resources dictates our current needs…and our needs always expand beyond the capacity of our resources….”

In addition, Jeremy reviewed my blog’s About Tony Chung page and hand-crafted an author bio with a photo.

They Ask for Permission

I mentioned to Jeremy that I would be writing this article, and gave him my initial three-point skeleton. He wanted me to list this point at the top, because for them, there is no substitute for the personal touch when aggregating content. I chose instead to close with this point, because it is by far the most important concept in re-purposing content from outside sources.

Requesting permission to reproduce others’ ideas shows respect to the creator, elicits respect from the creator, and fosters a sense of community. This experience is what drove me to write this article, because the simple effort of ask me impressed me so much. According to Jeremy, this has been SYS-CON’s model for years, and will continue to be their model.

Content may be freely available on the web, but it is definitely not free.

The first computers took up the space of a three-car garage. It’s amazing to think that all the computing power of those vacuum tube behemoths can now fit on a silicon chip the size of your fingernail, with processing room besides. However, even with all these advances in technology, we find it’s still not enough.

As a multimedia guy, I recognize two governing laws of data:

• The availability of our resources dictates our current needs.
• Our needs always expand beyond the capacity of our resources.

It is because of these two laws that more businesses are drawn to the facilities that cloud computing has to offer.

Before they reach this decision, they usually first follow a process similar to this:

• Build a bigger system.
• Compress the bigger system into a smaller space.
• Connect systems together to share resources.

My Dad is Bigger than Your Dad

Our first inclination is to put more stuff into the existing box. Where previously we would add more vacuum tubes to give our computers the ability to calculate floating point numbers, nowadays we install faster processors (or multiprocessors), larger hard drives, and more powerful graphics cards with higher video display RAM. The more technically inclined may even tweak the hardware to improve the speed of the data path between each of these components as well.

These bigger systems initially appear to provide all the computing power we need. We are able to run virtually any application, and store all of our data, on a single machine. Before long before we begin to realize new problems:

• These devices are finite. Disk space is a concrete measurement, and fairly soon we are horrified to learn we can’t store the digital photos of little Mischa’s tenth birthday party because our hard drives are already maxed out.
• These devices are insecure. Because all the applications and data reside on the same machine, that information is not safe in the event that computer is stolen, or worse, destroyed during a disaster.

Mainframe Computing

What if we were to instead invest in a mainframe computer—a really large computer that can hold our vast quantities of information? Then all our data would be in a centralized location safely protected from the elements. Also, theft of mainframe computers is really not an issue: I doubt very much that even a useful part of one would fit inside a hockey bag.

In a mainframe environment, to use any of our applications, all we’d need to do is connect a dumb terminal to this mainframe. Without any processing ability of its own, the terminal provides all the power of the mainframe at our disposal. Connect several hundred dumb terminals to the same mainframe and we can run an organization called IBM.

Reality Bites

While the processing power of mainframe computers is high, the upfront cost to install a mainframe environment is also high, and prohibitive to the average user. But what if we take our powerful desktop computers and connected them all together? For small- to medium-size enterprises, network computing is a lower-cost alternative to investing in a mainframe.

Most local area networks are set up as one or a combination of two ways:

• Peer-to-Peer: Applications and data are stored on individual computers. Users run applications on their own computers and can allow other users to work with their files from across the wire.
• Network Server: Applications and data are stored on a central computer or group of computers. Users can run applications installed on their local computer or on the network server. While users are encouraged to store their data on the central server, there is usually nothing to prevent a user from storing files locally as well.

In a networked environment, the security of the data is still at risk, because unlike mainframe components, a network server, usually the size of a standard desktop computer, can fit into a hockey bag. Also, even though a network setup can cost less than a mainframe, to properly configure it and continue to secure it requires a full-time IT specialist, which adds additional overhead. And once again, space is finite. An organization could easily outgrow even the highest capacity hard drive on their network server.

Head in the Cloud Computing

Through cloud computing, you can have all the power of several mainframe computers, the interconnectivity of a network system, the security of all your data being backed up on a regular basis, and the expertise of several IT specialists, all with a cost equivalent to buying lunch for your staff once a week. With faster Internet connection speeds becoming the norm, many users are already experiencing the benefits of cloud computing and not even realizing it.

Cloud computing is described on Wikipedia as, “…a style of computing where IT-related capabilities are provided ‘as a service’, allowing users to access technology-enabled services ‘in the cloud’ without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them.”

If a computer network provides the combination of computing power, storage capacity, user availability, and security that we want, cloud computing is a really large network, with all those features on steroids. Applications and data can be stored on any computer on this network, and while these computers may vary in size, several of them have the processing capability of mainframe computer systems.

We haven’t quite returned to the days of dumb terminals, however. Instead, we use the features of a standard web browser to access Rich Internet Applications (RIA) that simulate the smooth look and feel of a desktop application.

Soft Serve, Not the Ice Cream Kind

Cloud computing provides tangible benefits, available to users on request. Providing these features “as a service” means that the resources can be shared between several users without any noticeable decrease in performance.

Software as a Service (SaaS) reduces the need to install and upgrade software on users’ desktops. The user always opens the most up-to-date copy of the software, because it is maintained at all times. Google Apps and Zoho are examples of companies providing common application software. Both systems even provide an offline mode for times when users aren’t connected to the Internet. Their files are uploaded as soon as their computers are reconnected.

Hardware as a Service (HaaS) provides users with additional computing power, whenever they require it. For instance, if a retailer has a short-term need to process a high volume of point-of-sale (POS) transactions on Boxing Day, applications can be set up to share the processing across additional computers as necessary.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is another growing enterprise. These shared hosting systems provide a development environment for developers to build their own applications using prebuilt modules or custom code.

Accessibility, availability, scalability: The salient features of cloud computing. But when you boil it down to brass tacks, cloud computing is just a new take on an old idea. I didn’t even get to discuss virtualization, which is what gives all these “as a service” features their power. Because of virtualization, while the two governing laws of data still apply, it will take a LONG time for our needs to “expand beyond the capacity of our resources.”

Read, Watch, and Learn

• Wikipedia entry on cloud computing
• Explaining Computers on Cloud Computing
• Various thought leaders discuss What is Cloud Computing?

That’s revenue Google gets by focusing on the effectiveness of its advertising engine. “The Human Hands Behind the Google Money Machine” in today’s New York Times, shows the importance of analytics and how it is used by Google to drive revenue. The story reviews the genesis of the Googles AdWords program, five years ago when GoTo.com was acquired by Yahoo. GoTo was the first to pioneer advertising, but Google made a critical advance improving the system by actually looking at the click-throughs, not just what people were willing to bid for ads, that pushed Google ahead to stay. On the web it’s all based on metrics and analytics. At Duo we keep harping about analytics and how clients should benefit from studying what really go goes on with their sites – but few take advantage of that recommendation. The advantage there is there for those that do – and they are going to reap the rewards.