Web 2.0 / Cloud Computing
Web 2.0 is the popular term for advanced internet technologies and applications that represents a movement away from static internet delivered content to dynamic and sharable content with an emphasis on social network enablement including blogs and wikis.
Software as a Service puts an emphasis on provision of application services to companies via simplified licensing and distribution arrangement - principally making use of the Web as an interface tool. SaaS has become more compelling in recent years through "multi-tenant" approaches where many companies share the one application code set that runs in a highly protected and large data centre. This reduces costs for the platform supplier and enables savings to be passed to the consumer of the services.
Cloud Computing is the provision of a computing platform capability in the Internet space - without the customer necessarily knowing or caring where the processing and data storage occurs. Amazon, Google and Salesforce have been ground-breaking entrants in making their vast data centre platforms available to consumers to actually run applications independently of location, or of specific hardware. Most other major IT vendors have now followed and are currently repurposing their data centres and applications development toolsets to be "cloud capable". Currently, many robust solutions exist to deliver applications in a Cloud environment, replacing complex, expensive and high maintenance in-house systems such as CRM, HR/Payroll and Finance systems (to name a few), along with the infrastructure that is required to drive these applications.
Google has built upon its highly successful collaborative toolset layer (in large part Web 2.0) and is rapidly making more "utility" applications such as document sharing, email and execution of small applications able to run on its platforms. Salesforce has made its development environment (FORCE) available for third-parties to create vertical applications that can run on its platforms. Amazon provides highly scalable processing and storage solutions available - on which customers can run a variety of their own applications.
SMS is a Google Enterprise Partner and Salesforce.com implementation provider and Microsoft Gold Channel Partner. SMS is regularly assessing best of breed Web 2.0, SaaS and Cloud Computing technologies as credible alternatives to traditional technology solutions.