It’s the time of year when many people start putting together their holiday lists. While you can’t wrap them up as neatly as an iPad (hint, hint), Cloud Computing and Open Source technologies are the gifts that keep on giving.
The Cloud
Commercials and recent articles seem to imply that the "Cloud" is some mythical land where all Earthly information lives and computers frolic together like dragons in ’60s folk songs. The Cloud is a great and ever-growing resource, not a mythical land. Simply put, Cloud computing is the sharing of resources by many computers and users. Those resources can be software, memory and information provided to computer or smartphones over the Internet.
We know this idea is still sounding as fuzzy—and about as good of a gift—as those homemade socks Aunt Avis knitted for you last year, but the value to the Cloud is twofold. First, you can take advantage of nearly unlimited resources, and second, since you are sharing these resources, you only have to pay a fraction of the cost to maintain them.
To illustrate this, let’s pretend the resources offered in the Cloud were water. You are only growing a small garden and need to collect just enough to keep your plants happy, so you buy a barrel to collect rainwater. Most of the time the barrel is adequate, but during the hot summer months the demand is greater. Over the years, your garden expands and needs more and more water and your little barrel can’t keep up. Rather than buying bigger and bigger barrels, you tap into the reservoir and only use what you need.
This doesn’t mean that you have to share your new gift with every kid on the block. Cloud computing has many applications. It can be deployed as a network solution for organizations who wish to maximize their resources or function as a much larger community resource. Shared Web hosting is an example of a larger-scale deployment.
Many hosting providers offer shared hosting for Web applications and file storage that are dirt simple to setup, easy to manage, secure and affordable. Best of all, there is no equipment for you to buy or maintain, and it is fully scalable. Next time you run out of storage space, an upgrade is only a few clicks away rather than hours and hours of server setup and migration.
Open Source Software
If the next thing on your holiday gift list is affordable software options...well, you probably need to get out more. If you have checked it twice and it is still on the list, then you may wake up to find some Open Source programs under the tree.
Open Source is not a company like Microsoft, but a community of developers that believe in "free" software. "Free" is used in quotes here because while most of the Open Source applications are offered at no cost, they also give you access to the source code, allowing the freedom to change, customize and improve the software for the benefit of the community. There are Open Source programs that compete with MS Office, Photoshop and even full operating systems.
"This year for Christmas I want a new website."
Chances are that Santa won’t be dropping that down the chimney, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get everything you want this year. With Open Source content management systems (CMS) such as Drupal, Wordpress or our favorite, Joomla! (Yes, the "!" is supposed to be there.), you can easily build, edit and maintain your website without knowing how to write code or use expensive web development software.
"If I have to do this all myself, how is this a gift?"
First of all, these software applications are free to download and use, but the real gift is not having an overpriced bottleneck known simply as "The Webmaster."
That is not to say that you are all alone with just you and your webpage. There are many very good designers and developers ready and willing to customize your site. The power comes from the fact that you don’t need them the night before a big event to edit that typo in the title or to fix that broken link.
Another advantage to Open Source CMS software is how easily extendable they are. There are literally thousands of components, modules and plugins that offer anything from message boards to social media to event registration to make your website extremely functional.
While not as exciting as a Red Ryder BB Gun, Cloud Computing and Open Source software are gifts that should not be overlooked this year. (Plus, there is little chance of putting your eye out with them.)
The father/daughter/son team of Jeff Rasco, CMP, Christina Rasco Adams and Layton Rasco are partners in Attendee Management, Inc., a registration services company based in Wimberley, Texas, a small Texas Hill Country hamlet outside of Austin. Always looking for ways to gain efficiencies and effectiveness, they stay on the lookout for new technologies and ways of intelligent application to the global meeting and event community. They can be reached at talkingtech@attendeenet.com.
