The technology press has been covering the move to cloud technology for quite some time. Most technology pundits are complicit to the fact that we will eventually find a significant percentage of our technology funding being applied to cloud based technologies. We have already seen a major move to hosted backups and online services such as hosted Exchange. In fact the newest product offering of Business Assurance for Time Matters (ba4tm.com) provides fixed priced services for hosted Exchange synchronization setup and configuration.

Microsoft's "next big thing" SQL Azure, has been slowly making it's way to wide release. SQL Azure is currently in Community Technology Preview (CTL) and scheduled to be commercially available in November 2009. In general, SQL Azure is hosted version SQL Server. In theory, we should be able to point Time Matters to our database on SQL Azure instead of purchasing and deploying within the client organization. Pricing will be extremely enticing but will Time Matters be compatible? Data Equity will be testing Time Matters specifically for SQL Azure compatibility. Bandwidth usage and changes to data access methodology in V10 are of potential concern.

Advantages of a cloud server are significant; high availability, scalability, centralized backup and management, zero maintenance and remote access. Client workstations no longer need to perform Time Matters based synchronization and distant departments no longer require SQL replication. Add to that the ability to connect to the database from a client's site or the coffee shop and we have an early cloud alternative. Time Matters clients migrating from Professional to the SQL requirement for version 10 will also benefit from simplified deployment management of a hosted solution.  

Watch the blog for more results from our testing.