8 Free Cloud Computing Services | Software Providers

Cloud computing has been fogged with uncertainty about whether it will be accepted by the crowd or not. But by the advent of the computer industry giants like IBM, Microsoft and Amazon into cloud computing, it has to be accepted plainly that “cloud computing is unstoppable”. Like always, the hard-time of birth pain is over and free cloud computing software and services are on the scene. Now you can get your hands dirty on cloud computing with all those free cloud services up in the horizon. The newest and best of them have been listed out here and more will be out soon. All of these tools will not be completely free however; you’ll get sufficient privileges for you normal need. Even Gmail is not free! If you exceed their free storage space then you have to pay them for getting additional storage. Similar is the case here with the free cloud computing services and software. Have a look at each of them and do let me know if anything new pops up, in the comments below.

Before you start checking out the free cloud services here , I would suggest you understand the fundamentals of this technology to have an idea of what you are doing.Cloud computing itself has two main branches:

•  Cloud SaaS (Software as a Service) Providers

These are real pieces of software that you can access directly through the internet, no you don’t need to install anything in your computer. In a few years(strike) months  you will not be ‘installing’ Microsoft Office, Antivirus software, Medial Players  or anything in your computers. You will simply open your browser, go to the cloud service vendor and run the application directly! This is computing will be when software as a Service providers heats up! ‘Google docs’ is a perfect example of Saas already in existence.

•  Cloud IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) Providers

When it comes to infrastructure as a service providers, its more of a useful side of cloud computing service for the big companies. They wont be needing to install a copy of windows in each of their nodes or configure severs to do them. In fact, they wont need servers at all. They would be ordering for servers and pre-configured networks online and they will be accessing them online. This implies huge savings for the company for network set-up cost and a wage-loss for the present day network administrator ( so better get cloud computing certified soon)! The good news is : IaaS is suddenly became personal now! We actually already have someone providing a pre-configured personal computer for you PC and android on the cloud for free( told in detail below).  

Okay I don’t think you need to bother whether you are using IaaS or Saas  free cloud computing (at least as long as its free). So I’ve listed out the latest and best of the free cloud computing software and services. Check out each of them and enjoy the ease!

Free Amazon Web Services

To get the new customers to get started in the cloud computing, AWS is introducing a new free usage tier. Beginning November 12010, new AWS customers will be able to run a basic version of free Amazon EC2 for a year, while also leveraging a new free usage tier on several other specifications. You just need a valid credit-card to sign up for this offer!

Cloudo

Is a free cloud computer which lives in your browser. You don’t have to bear the task of configuring anything new. Everything is set as perfect as it can be in this environment. In addition to the stylish, sleek interface they provide you with added centralized back-up and perfect security. The image of opening a word document on a cloudo is given here.

Free Zoho

Zoho is an online collaboration tool just like the Google Docs. We have actually used it for a project work when all of the participants were at different locations. They have all the functionalities like, Office tools, Links, Forums ,Wiki creation etc. Zoho doesn’t even make you feel that you are using a cloud service. It’s all organized well just like our own program list. They provide cloud collaborated projects for up to 3 member team as free.

Mint.com

A Cloud based personal finance tool, to manage your money. Just create an account and access all your balances and transactions together on the web or on your iPhone.It was launched in September 2007. In just 2 years of existence it has received  prestigious web awards from the likes of CNN Money, Time, Business Week, PC Mag etc.

eyeOS

This is yet another efficient online desktop. (I’m already overwhelmed by the number of free computers and their combined disk spaced I’m going to own in the coming days) I don’t want describe anything more on another online cloud computer. Since this is the era of their initial launch we don’t have much different features among them to delve into. Its all yours, have fun exploring it!

Platform as a Service provide, hosting spaces and programming environments to build network of servers etc. The two best free PaaS services are Google App Engine and Sales Force.

Google App Engine : Although it has been around since 2008, it has come to considerable day-light thers days. They allow platform for development and web application hosting in Google managed data center. It uses some amount of virtualization for application process and for running multiple server. At, the moment Java and Python are the languages supported.

SalesForce.com: They are one of the leading Platform as service (Paas) provides. But for the free edition they only allow to create one application. Still its better than nothing!