Cloud Computing

From Open Entree - Google Sites

"The latest and most exciting development in technology is "cloud computing", providing "software as a service" via large and efficient data centers, as opposed to locally running software (see The Economist Magazine report and NewsWeek & InformationWeek articles on Cloud Computing).

Google is leading the way by offering a growing number of free, multilingual tools on its cloud, including the following:

1. Gmail - basic Google account for e-mail, chat, and access to other services
   
2. Sites - makes it easy for users to create their own free web sites
   
3. Docs - enables users to maintain and share spreadsheets (also works off-line with Excel spreadsheets)
4. Picasa - manages and stores digital images on-line
   
5. YouTube - allows users to publish videos to the Internet
   
6. Checkout - can receive credit card payments (just like PayPal)
7. AdSense - another free revenue stream for OpenEntry vendors
   
8. Translate - performs rough translations of OpenEntry.com into major languages. While they are not perfect, they make OpenEntry accessible to SMEs worldwide.
   
9. AppsEngine - (in Google's own words) "makes it easy to build scalable applications that grow from one user to millions of users without infrastructure headaches"
10. G1 phone - (optional) integrated with Gmail and has a built-in digital camera
11. Blogger -Blogger is a free blog publishing tool from Google for easily sharing your thoughts with the world. Blogger makes it simple to post text, photos and video ...
    

From these powerful tools on the Google cloud, OpenEntry has created an e-commerce platform that makes it easy for any SME to create/update an individual web catalog and for a SME Network to aggregate many individual member catalogs into a branded network market generating the visibility and credibility that the SMEs cannot achieve on their own, one-by-one.

Moreover, since these tools operate on the cloud, they facilitate OpenEntry User Support staff collaborating on-line in real time with SME users anywhere in the world, for example by simultaneously accessing the same spreadsheet (see Live User Support)."