IT managers and information security will be unable to directly control or adequately protect company data in the coming years. The confluence of cloud computing solutions, mobile technologies and the consumerization of IT is driving major changes in how corporate data is accessed, used and shared.

Instead of trying to fight with this movement and change data management, companies should seek an adjustment to the new scenario in a safe and practical advice to executives.

We need to rethink how to protect the company. We have to stop saying ‘no‘ and try to form a partnership with our community of users to allow safe access of new technologies and social media tools, and the executives. Many of the current rules on safety in undertakings should be discarded. In this new world, we can not control the device.

Company data is increasingly accessed and shared via media that have some amount of direct control, as is the case of personal mobile devices and social networks used by employees and services hosted by cloud providers. With the expanded use of public and private clouds, we do not know where our data resides or will it be accessed.

Models that focus on traditional security perimeter network controls do not work in the new IT environment. Companies must begin to implement controls that can authenticate, authorize and monitor user access through new approaches. Instead of having a firewall just to avoid the entry of malicious code on the network, companies must begin to add controls that can keep critical information protected.

As users begin to access corporate data from mobile terminals and other channels, the security manager must find a way to deal with an avalanche of information related to devices, cloud infrastructure, geo-location data and sensors.

Although many processes need to change some things about the security but the company remains the same.

Governance has not changed much. We still have to maintain the basic cyber security such as patching and installing anti-virus tools. These ingredients are essential and security managers should not ignore such measures. The job security is the same, but now we have an additional layer of complexity.

The bandwidth, which we will cover in this article as a monthly traffic, is surely one of the parameters of interest when one talks of a webhosting solution. Whether it’s a shared hosting solution or a dedicated server, your ISP gives value to bandwidth, which indicates the speed at which our website may provide content to the outside users, and a value of traffic per month , Instead it indicates how many gigabytes does our site use every month. These two values are in fact relevant, in fact if we multiply the bandwidth available to us for the month of use we get exactly the maximum monthly traffic that we use for our web site.

Many customers, when choosing a solution for a new web site, or already launched website, find it difficult to estimate how much bandwidth is needed for their site, and therefore rely on solutions that are often not suitable. In this article we see, briefly, how you can get an idea of bandwidth consumption and how to predict the increase in the short term.

The traffic monitoring carried out by our web site is crucial for several reasons. The most obvious is that many hosting solutions charge the cost as per additional GB over the threshold limit. If our plan includes 20 GB of monthly traffic, and the use is 25 GB in a month, then we will have to pay extra amount to the provider in excess of that 5 GB bandwidth.

The same applies to the VPS and dedicated solutions where the charging is often even   more stringent. Monitoring of the traffic allows us to understand the days with more visits and requests from users, and may be the wake-up call to see if the traffic generated is not entirely “normal“, but produced from attacks on our web site (DDOS Attack) or by search engine bots or other organizations that require our pages all the time.

The speed will change significantly if the bandwidth is completely used: In this case, the provider does not provide us with tools to understand how much bandwidth we are using in real time, except in the case of dedicated servers and VPS. Many shared hosting accounts have such a dedicated bandwidth of 512 kbit / s or 1 Mbit / s, while other vendors prefer not to expose this value.

As previously mentioned, the value of bandwidth is a parameter connected to the monthly traffic, however, it has a greater importance in some cases because it allows to understand exactly how many visitors we can accommodate simultaneously online, with a continuous request for content from our account or server. Take, for example to the streaming services, or to services providing multimedia content, in this case it is essential to have a value guaranteed bandwidth.

If our website is already online, the first thing to do is have an idea of the current consumption that we are producing. In this case we take a look at the statistics of the web server, and more importantly, we cannot use tools like Google Analytics, which do not provide information about the use of bandwidth.

Two tools that we can take into account are AWStats and Webalizer. These two statistics software are installed by almost all hosting providers which allow you to check the bandwidth usage on a monthly, daily and even hourly basis.

Many hosting providers, especially in the case of dedicated servers and VPS, from their control panels provide the ability to monitor the traffic used to be able to get an idea of monthly consumption. The control panels such as Plesk and cPanel provide the ability to monitor the bandwidth usage per web site, on a monthly basis. Once we have a clear idea of the consumption of our website we can certainly provide the best future growth even and especially to move towards a web hosting solution that can guarantee the traffic without any problem.

Now that we have seen that we can use statistics to get an idea of the consumption of our web site, the question is trivial, as we do in the event of a new website. First we must understand what we talk about in detail: a website that was launched with much content online without any promotion on dedicated channels, it is hard to see thousands of visitors on the website daily.

Unfortunately in this case we do not have technical data: Study the impact of an online site meets several qualitative questions. If we plan an advertising campaign on multiple channels, we can now estimate a high number of visits (proportional to the number of channels and the channels chosen for ad), and if our web site relies solely on organic traffic and search engine traffic, we cannot get 2000 daily visits.

We can try to understand the consumer as well for visits: It is easy to “measure” the content. First we make our web pages and do an average of their weight. Today, a page can easily get a weight of 400/500 Kb: we know that in this case if you open it 10 times, we used 4 MB of traffic, if they are opened 100 times, 40 MB is used and so on.

With an estimate of the traffic generated from our website, on a given day, we must consider a number of additional variables: the majority of websites have days during the week where the traffic is higher, these are usually working days, but this pattern may change depending on the website. Like, the night of the Web sites are those where less traffic ever recorded. Once our website has been online for a few weeks we will have a clearer idea of the days with higher consumption and hours in which there is a spike in visits.

If we talk about solutions such as VPS and dedicated servers, then it is evident that the monthly traffic and bandwidth are values that need to be taken into strong consideration: providers set limits in terms of guaranteed bandwidth, such as 10 Mbit / s, and in terms of band burst, ie the quantity of excess bandwidth that can be used for a limited period of time.

If our server has dedicated 10 Mbit / s guaranteed bandwidth and 15 Mbit / s burst of bandwidth, means that for a certain period of time in the day we get to use the value of 15 Mbit / s.

Currently there are dedicated servers and VPS packages which are activated with flat rate, where they also have several terabytes of traffic including: in this case it is useful to understand what is the guaranteed minimum speed for use thereof.

In the case of shared hosting solutions: Nowadays many hosting providers do nothing but place the value of “unlimited” bandwidth that can be delivered out, a practice that may mislead customers as unlimited resources do not exist. This choice is due to the fact that most shared hosting customers have an average consumption of the infrastructure of the hosting provider. This does not mean that our web site can really accommodate millions of visitors, usually the contract of service raises this issue clearly and frees the provider from liability for the suspension of the service if excessive traffic is carried.

The information technology sector has undergone numerous changes over the past 15 years. Computational systems that occupied large rooms within companies today have laptops and we can do almost anything with a good mobile phone. Even the fax machine, which emerged in the meantime, it is barely remembered by those attending the university. Everything moved very quickly and for the better.

Nowadays, everyone is more poetic, or perhaps smarter. So much so that the term “green IT” took time, though actually it suggests, to some extent, the benefits of responsible and rational use of natural resources. But the most curious, in recent times, is to see a CIO asking about the meaning of “cloud computing“. After all, if the term has been pronounced by the chief executives of Microsoft, Apple, IBM and Dell, something important lies ahead. Well, this is not always an absolute truth.

The term “cloud computing” has been defined in many ways, indeed even by its author – still unknown. The most plausible explanation is that, unlike that suggestive image of computers flying through the air, it comes to ways of running their base of services ‘in the air‘, using an area already well exploited by mobile operators. The idea is to give someone access to your data or your company’s data without necessarily being physically close. Total Remoting…

If virtualization, which proposes not only the proliferation of servers, but other IT resources such as databases, networks and desktops, has not been fully realized and exploited entirety by most of the companies. Cloud computing will certainly take time to fall into the full understanding and enjoyment.

Moreover, the most common methods used today to protect the virtual environment does not offer exactly the same security guarantees in physical environments. This has required constant improvement, as investment in Data Center to have an automated backup, ready to accelerate the processes of storage and retrieval of information with a low drive, or even virtualization backup.

So before you let your thoughts fly in ‘cloud‘, it is wise to think and invest in a technology infrastructure that is viable and ready to streamline your company’s business.

I’ve been following cloud computing for some time and every day I see that it is accelerating the ripening process and trying to understand its concept and technologies. Today it is clear that, in its various forms, cloud computing has the potential to significantly change the way IT operates, and manages and allocates its budget, and pays for its use by users. Of course it is a change that does not happen abruptly, but gradually.

Public clouds, for example, while still generating fears of security and privacy, which are in my opinion, largely unfounded, no doubt put pressure on the structure of IT. Why keep a set of dedicated servers often idle, and a staff dedicated to operations that do not add value to upgrades of operating system releases if I can transfer this activity to a trusted provider?

Moreover, when analyzing the portfolio of applications in a company, we found that most of them are not strategic or critical to profile data that is not sensitive in terms of security. And we also observed that most of these applications could operate in an environment of less than 95% availability. However, these applications can be moved to public clouds without any major scares. In fact, a public cloud can offer a level of security and availability much higher than that offered in many of today’s data centers to small and medium enterprises.

The topic cloud also begins to permeate discussions of strategic companies. In a meeting with business executives and the CIO of a large company it became clear that they were already considering that a significant portion of its future computing power would be served by public clouds, with a consequent impact on the IT budget,  which will shift the costs of “Capital Expenditure” to “operational Expenditure”.

On the other hand, the concern of disintermediation by IT users in many areas also appeared at the meeting, as they begin to look for other solutions, cloud, SaaS, without even interacting with the CIO. This is a challenge that IT has to face because uncontrolled spread of a cloud for the organization can create problems of integration, lack of adherence to security policies and increase the risk of audit to identify issues of governance.

The CIO has to play a proactive role in the process of adoption of cloud. Indeed, the question is not whether or not to adopt cloud, but what is the pace of adoption. The first step is to identify which applications exist, which may at first go to public cloud and / or private and create a catalog of services and applications that will be available in the clouds.

For example, the CIO can begin reviewing applications available today under two points of view, a level of criticality and the other how they are strategic to the business. Most applications will be below of the critical level and can be transferred to public clouds.

The pressure for cost reduction is constant and note that it is increasing every year. At the same time the complexity of the business environment demands faster responses and increasingly complex IT solutions. Seems an equation without answers, but if we analyze the potential of cloud, we can immediately identify:

1) Move non-critical (and not strategic) applications and not strategic to public clouds,
2) Implement private clouds for certain controlled environments such as development and testing, increasing the cycle
3) Create service catalogs that allow the user to operate in self-service, with minimal interference from IT.

These actions help to better understand what is cloud and its potential while allowing the organization to adjust and refine their governance processes, already contemplating cloud computing. It also helps to more accurately implement charge back processes that are indispensable when it comes to cloud computing.

Services to create a catalog that includes internal and external applications (SaaS), similar to an Apple AppStore is an innovative and highly efficient way of providing services to users. The IT department can and should define the rules of the game: Which applications can enter the catalog? The IT department should establish an approval process that can evaluate cloud providers and SaaS applications available. Thus, IT does not become a bottleneck and at the same time clearly shows that it is actively driving the process of “cloudification” in company.

The important thing is that, IT understands that its role does not disappear with the cloud computing model. It remains responsible for providing the best services in the lowest possible cost.

Cloud changes the context: IT is no longer the only provider of the service and should leave this monopoly role and assume a new role. So sometimes the best solution is built, developed and operated by IT and other best alternative is to operate in a public cloud. IT should be at the center of these decisions and for that, the mindset must be changed.

The OpenDNS service is a public DNS, one of the best known, offering a great performance, and is open to all – hence the “Open” is there in the name. We often hear that the DNS system is the largest database in the world. In some ways, it really is, but there is a fundamental difference between the DNS system and a traditional database (MySQL as a server used by a dedicated server, for example), which is that the DNS is a distributed database .

With OpenDNS, you simply rely on a fast alternative, safe, and free of redundant DNS servers. The service has a huge cache, operates its own network of servers and software, and gets faster as more users use the tool, as more addresses are added to the list, and so, gradually, their performance will be enhanced.

Allied to this, one advantage of OpenDNS is its redundancy. The service has a wide network of data centers and servers spread across several locations around the world which means that the availability of services is also highly considered. If a data center goes down, for example, all traffic is redirected automatically, using cutting edge technology for the data center nearest you.

Phishing Protection (protection against false websites): Any attempt to access sites that are identified as such, is automatically blocked and an alert message is displayed. And for this, OpenDNS uses PhishTank, one of the largest and most widely used databases of phishing in the world.

Domain Blocking through the control panel: You can simply block access to any domain you want. Very useful for network administrators who want to block access to fraudulent Web sites with inappropriate content, etc.. The tool also features a contact form at the time of the blockade, so that the user can contact the network administrator if desired.

Parental Controls: A tool similar to the Domain Blocking, but much more powerful when the need is to block access to sites with inappropriate content, such as violence, for example, because it has a pre-defined list of more than four million blocked sites. All these sites are arranged in 50 categories of filtering, simply select the desired categories, or a level of pre-defined filtering, and within minutes the changes have already been applied.

Shortcuts: You can set shortcuts that can be used during navigation.

Statistics: The system offers a complete dashboard with statistics, such as “total requests”, “most visited domains”, “total attempts to access blocked domains”, etc., always containing complete information such as date, time, source and IP destination, etc..

Customization (customization of error pages): When you or any user on your network attempts to access a nonexistent site, or for any reason it is unavailable at that time, a page is displayed at the time, shows an consulted reason for the failure, which servers failed, etc. Also, this page can be customized by the user, and for companies, for example, you can insert the same logo, slogan, etc.

For some people, the local storage may be the most convenient and / or accessible way to backup your files. By having the files stored on digital media, we have them in our control and we also can provide a sense of security and peace of mind. But storing the files locally can also have disadvantages if something happens to the storage devices. So how do we know if the benefits outweigh the disadvantages? Here are some possible pros and cons that may affect the decision to use local storage for backing up your files:

Local Storage Place

PROS:

• We have control of our data
• Our files are portable and can carry them with us when necessary,
• If we use external hard drives or Pens , we can access them without connection to the Internet,
• We can easily add more storage if needed (additional drives, etc)

CONS:

• It is necessary to make room for storing the digital media for backup,
• Possible hardware failure in access to files
• Constraints that we need and forget to take them with us
• Too much volume to bring us
• Risk of theft and / or loss of any content due to circumstances such as fire.

If you are someone who is always moving and needs to travel as much as possible, storage in the cloud can be the perfect way to be able to backup and access your files. Maybe your laptop has a hard drive failure or even be stolen if you use the backup in the cloud, it will always have a copy of your files available. For example a company that wants to make sure that your data is safely out of the usual place, in the event of a disaster or system failure. As with the local store, here are some possible pros and cons that may influence the choice of cloud storage for backup files:

Storage On Cloud Computing Solutions

PROS:

• No need to carry the Pens  or bulky external drives
• All files are accessible wherever you have an internet connection
• No need to deal with the local storage media (or the “maintenance”)
• The files are safe even if the home is burglarized or other unfortunate disasters occur.

CONS:

• The data is not 100% under our control
• Possible hardware failure or loss of files by the storage vendor in the cloud.
• We do not have access to our files unless we have an Internet connection
• The provider of cloud storage may eventually stop providing the service due to financial difficulties or other unforeseen circumstances
• The possibility that the data is being stolen by hackers due to a security breach by the storage vendor in the cloud

We can also choose to try to cover all possibilities, using local storage in the cloud to make backups of our files. If something goes wrong with the one, we always have the other to support us. We need access to files within or outside the home? As long as we have access to information in the local store or an Internet connection, we are always assured.

Maybe, we are already prepared to choose a backup solution, but we are not sure which option we shall go for. Here is your chance to ask yourself. You have already implemented a great backup solution?

The theme of online statistics is one of those, which has always represented a mystery to all persons and companies that are preparing to monitor their website, to understand its increasing popularity over time. Today there are thousands of statistics services like Google Analytics, webserver based, i.e., based on the analysis of the log of the web server. The most famous of the first category is surely Google Analytics, a former paid product (produced by Urchin) that Google has made free. In terms of web-based solutions instead of the software, there is definitely well known AWStats and Webalizer, which, however, require installation within the web server, hosting the web site.

What I know is that, the analysis tools allow you to understand almost exactly what issues are on your web site and its weaknesses: it goes beyond the fact, the number of page views and unique users, with values and parameters that can be very useful for the operator of the website.

In this article we will see an evening of good solutions and parameters within which you should monitor your web site. The article refers in particular to the possibility of using advanced tools of Google Analytics to improve the overall view of the progress of the website.

Besides the visits and page views

Usually these are two parameters that are seen by users, visits and web pages viewed. Although they represent the starting point for understanding what is popular on our website, these two parameters do not provide information about the possibility of increasing these numbers. Thus we see that other values are summarized directly from Google Analytics and are of fundamental importance:

Pages per visit : This parameter is important and closely related to the loyalty of our users. Indicates how many pages did each visitor visit on our website. Obviously when the higher the number of visits, then it means that our site is able to “drive” the navigator in a real way, a limited number of pages usually means that our website has links that take the user to multiple pages and do not limit it to single visit, coming almost certainly from the research online.

Bounce Rate : Bounce rate has got an equally important value because it is tied to page views per user. Bounce rate is the percentage of single page visits, i.e., visits in which the user left your site from the landing page. This parameter is an indicator of the quality of visits. A high bounce rate generally indicates that the entry pages are not relevant to your visitors. The more effective the landing page, the more visitors will remain on site and will provide a conversion.

New visits : visits are obviously people who had never seen the site before. This value is important because it gives an idea of how our website is able to attract new visitors, but it could also be a negative point if the value is too high and should therefore say that we are not quite able to retain the users of the site.

Unique visits : this parameter is important because it expresses only unique users who have visited the website, without double counting, and especially not counting the visits of any bots.

Set goals for your website

Once we have added the tracking code inside our web site for the pages, we move to the objectives of the site. Google Analytics allows you to think in these terms to allow site managers to understand if you are working in the right direction, but each website has different goals, which vary depending on the type of website and also depending on the business model.

As you can see in the screenshot, the objectives must be set manually in your Google Analytics. It is essential to create the actual rules that allow you to define whether that goal has been reached, or what percentage it is, depending on the number of visits, pages viewed, time spent and other parameters.

The moment on which we are going to display the progress of the web site, it will also show the trend according to the goals set. Obviously an e-commerce website will have different objectives from those of an information website.

We connect to Google Analytics Webmaster Tool

Google Webmaster Tool is a useful tool to monitor the situation on your own website within the Google search engine. The company has made it possible to link this tool with Google Analytics in order to weave the data in the two tools. Once we made the connection, the number of impressions for the query is displayed, for example, the number of links that take you to our website.

The following image shows how the page will appear:

In this way you will also understand what are the keywords to be developed in our website statistics. It gives a clear idea of which ones generate the most impressions and also the highest number of clicks.

The speed of the site and our pages

For some time this parameter directly affects the ranking assigned by Google to our pages, so it is useful to keep an eye on the speed of opening every single page of our website. To do this, you can enable additional features such as Speed Site in Google Analytics and get an overview on the slowest pages: note that those who have a greater load time are obviously those that have a higher bounce rate than the others. The users do not wait for the page that is completely filled, because of its slowness, and leave the site.

Trace the events in Google Analytics

Another important tool that is often overlooked or not fully used by webmasters. This tool allows you to monitor any type of activity within your website, as can be, for example downloading an ebook, rather than recording in a specific area of the site, or clicks on a particular link that represents a important action for us.

The use of events must do great things, just “hang” a small line of code for the link you want to monitor.

Let’s follow the line of code to add:

onclick = “_gaq.push (['_trackEvent', 'category', 'action', 'opt_label', 'opt_value']);”

Category : Indicates which type of content / actions we are going to trace, for example eBooks, advertising or whatever name we give it.

Action : This entry defines the type of interaction with our users, and can take on different values: click, button, play, stop.

Label : Identifies the type of event that must be tracked.

Value : Specifies a specific value to be associated with that event if the action is completed. It is useful because we can then use that value directly in the definition of the event to monitor.

Once these parameters are defined, all you will have to do is insert this string of code in our HTML-formatted link, simply adding the string.

Conclusions

The definition of a strategy for monitoring your website takes time and knowledge, in large companies and for the most popular Internet companies, this role is usually played by a specific person in the team, or more than one person, which deals exclusively with tracking what happens to the best site and define the reports that provide directions to modify or enrich the pages.

Using Google Analytics can become simple and the framework integrates all the technology needed to monitor any event that happens within our website, giving the opportunity to see trends in the long term and understand what actions to take.

Cloud…

In assessing these assumptions related to the cloud, researchers focused specifically on public clouds and made a simple question: Fact or Fiction?

Fiction – But Maybe Not For Long

While migration to the cloud is not yet universal, there is no doubt that it is a wonderful trend that will only grow with increase of its adoption and importance. According to a 2011 survey of Advanced Micro Devices, approximately 37% of companies are already using cloud. And 24% of respondents to the survey in 2011, among data center managers, retailers and engineers, said they have plans to follow or implement a cloud computing in the next 18 months. According to a recent IDC report, worldwide revenue from IT services in public clouds exceeded $ 21.5 billion in 2010 and projected to reach $ 72.9 billion in 2015.

Regardless of which one is more accurate, it is clear that the cloud market is growing – and is much higher than suggested the news a year ago.

Why The Problems And Delays?

Although providers have improved data security and privacy considerably since the beginning, persistent concerns over access to proprietary data, location and transfer continue to limit distributed adoption. The flexibility of the system in general is another concern with public clouds. Additionally, blackouts in various cloud providers are probably reason enough to discourage some businesses that depend on the availability of fixed network for survival.

Switching To Cloud Means That You No Longer Have To Worry About Downtime..

Fiction  

If your company switches to an external cloud provider, the risk of a blackout is simply transferred to their data center provider. The only change is the control. In its own data center, you control the infrastructure and availability of your network and data. This control, of course, brings many problems of ownership and responsibility with it that may have been a factor in the shift to cloud first. The control means responsibility, and the burden of responsibility for ensuring network availability is something that some IT managers prefer not to be responsible.

If your organization chooses private cloud, you can gain a measure of fault protection for a single server, but the damage caused by a total blackout in the data center continues to be destructive. To maintain a robust infrastructure, power and cooling, it is critical to support a private cloud infrastructure. The management and monitoring of data center becomes even more critical.

Finally, it is important to remember that simply switching to cloud does not eliminate the concern about downtime or damage that may cause a blackout to your business. Customers remember the  network failure – not the fact that the failure was the fault of your cloud provider.

Cloud Computing Solutions Always Reduces Costs And Workload

Fiction

This is a common argument for the adoption of cloud, but depending on the applications you plan to support with the cloud, this may or may not be true. At least in the short term, it is likely that a transition to cloud is very laborious.

Businesses that switch to this type of work do so to meet a specific need and leverage resources previously unavailable (especially dedicated servers) that, through the cloud, are available on demand.

But cloud services adapted to the specific needs of your business require a transfer of culture that can be difficult to manage. Even when the setting is appropriate, classifying what can and can not be changed for cloud is a process that takes time. The increased operational efficiency can be light at the end of the tunnel, but it is a short tunnel.

In terms of costs, cloud customers save money only when performing on specific cloud platforms. On the other hand, the report says that maintaining a private data center continues to have the best cost benefit.

In January, when the Megaupload was closed by U.S. authorities, many users felt hurt. Not because of the fact that copyrighted files were taken from the network, but because the service was also used to store information of legal users, much like the Google. Of a sudden, millions of documents and photos were lost when access to Megaupload was interrupted, and thus a cloud storage option was lost.

This event raised a question: how safe are the files that are stored in the cloud? Is there any guarantee that they will not be lost or if the cloud service is taken offline, as users can do to recover the holding?

For more sites and servers that can be closed, the cloud is hardly impaired. The cloud computing, as the internet, there is a system dependent on a single connection. The scenario that every cloud will disappear is practically impossible.

A single server can fail, but, according to the experts, the great cloud computing companies have plans for possible disasters. Large corporations have backup plans and disaster recovery plans in case of floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters. Thus, if more than one server is damaged, the files are stored on some other server as well, thus preventing users from losing their data.

Another concern is regarding the safety of the cloud. Not everyone feels confident when leaving important files with personal information stored in a place that they do not know exactly where it is, despite knowing how to access them easily. The biggest risk is not confidential data, but the possibility of losing data. If you rely on a single provider, you need evidence that they are keeping your data offline.

My recommendation is to make a second copy of your files elsewhere. It’s a good idea to save the data on your own computer, for example, to avoid losing important data.

The reign of the personal computer as the main element of access to technology seems to be moving more quickly to its end. According to the research, the phenomenon of consumerization, the virtualization and the emergence of mobile devices should condemn the traditional PC environments and materialize the platform through smartphones and in particular the personal cloud.

The personal cloud should support the emergence of a new level of flexibility associated with devices used for daily activities, taking advantage of the strengths of each terminal. Ultimately it will allow new levels of user satisfaction and productivity in the workplace. Major trends in computing have put the PC into focus and it now takes a broader perspective that includes smartphones, tablets and other consumer devices.

The new personal services of cloud computing solutions will become the link between the devices used by consumers in different moments of their lives. But this is not a simple process, for various reasons, the survey indicates. Many trends have created a new paradigm that companies must adapt and that will also greatly benefit consumers. Among the causes, the first and most obvious, is the computerization. Users today know better technology than previous generations.

On the other hand, modern consumers also have different expectations, driven largely by the media and the Internet, social networks and new mobile devices. Moreover, from the democratization of technology, users of all types can now have sophisticated technologies within reach. The research indicates that some technologies such as virtualization improved flexibility and made more options available to companies in the adoption of mobile environments to internal customers.

Virtualization also provides a way to move legacy applications from the PC to a new emerging world. A third trend that favors the development of personal clouds in relation to the traditional PC is called “app-fixing.” In it, users observe carefully how applications are designed, provided and consumed or used. And this will inevitably have a dramatic impact on all other aspects of the market. These changes will change the way applications are designed and implemented in business environments.

Self service and mobility services in cloud computing open a new world of opportunities. Each user can now have an expandable and almost infinite number of resources available. Impacts on infrastructure are impressive. But when applied to people, it brings some specific advantages even more surprising. Digital activities of IT users are more self-directed than ever.

Users seeking to take their own decisions about the applications, services and content, based on an online offering is almost unlimited. This promotes a culture of self-service that users expect to have in all aspects of their digital experience, including the business environment. Finally, the mobility is the real catalyst for this new paradigm.

Today, mobile devices combined with cloud computing solutions can perform most of the computing tasks. At the same time, they provide a degree of comfort and flexibility that is only possible with mobile terminals. The appearance of more interfaces make these devices more practical. Thus, according to researcher, users can take advantage of resources for detecting and reading touching, gestures, contextual knowledge and speech recognition.