To cloud, or not to cloud? That is the question many customers are asking, after the confusion created by vendors jumping on the “cloud washing” bandwagon.

For those who are relatively new to the world of cloud computing, the “Cloud” is a remote service offering hardware and software accessible via the internet. It’s a great way for companies to store and access data from a secure and remote location without the issues associated with having all that infrastructure on site.

The confusion really begins when potential Cloud customers become unsure as to what is and what isn’t a real Cloud product and how it could be useful to them.

To help give things a little perspective, Amazon is the world’s number one cloud services vendor. Its basic storage or Simple Storage Service – S3 and volume, Elastic Block Storage service, are market leaders and are the benchmark for newer players entering the cloud-hosted competition for Cloud space. With a large and growing number of organisations using public cloud storage services, the potential for the industry to grow is big business.

There are a lot of other big players in the market that offer a range of similar storage, computing and content delivery networks. They make it possible for organisations and individuals to host multiple sites in one location, without spending a lot of time and money building and managing servers. It’s probably a good time to note here, however; that the Cloud is not a purely magical place that will let individual customers simply achieve nirvana-like leaps and bounds in computing. It is a complicated technology though, that will help IT professionals better manage an organisations computing needs, more cost-effectively.

Not all is lost and out of reach for mere mortals, however. Cloudsafe365 created a WordPress plugin for Amazon Web Services (AWS) in order to provide backup and scan for any vulnerabilities. Later we identified a need for Startups, which were having difficulties accessing and setting up effective cloud hosting. We then developed CloudManager to specifically make it easier for those looking for an effective and manageable AWS cloud setup.

As the Cloud grows not only in popularity but in real and effective hosting services outcomes, so do the support solutions, making it possible for more people to benefit from it. The more potential customers are able to understand what cloud computing is and what it can do for them, the more inclined they will be to seek out user-friendly ways of making it work to grow their business.