On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 1:29 PM, John Hinton webmaster@ew3d.com wrote:
It seems however that the definition is an online infrastructure which may: provide applications provide file storage calendar contacts collaboration communication among a number of other things
and that these services are all available to 'users' on the cloud via: servers desktops laptops tablets phones
As for how many servers? Well that is a matter of how many users you have, loads, storage capacity and just about anything else a single or bank of servers might do.
At the moment, our business has 4 people in four different locations and we want to better share our work. Seems like file shares are one aspect, but perhaps some applications, certainly collaboration and I really don't like putting stuff on Google. I see at least one of these allows you to run OpenOffice through the browser. I haven't really done a lot of research into this yet and really all I wanted was some ideas for a simple open source cloud software that was preferably friendly to CentOS.
Also, this would be a good exercise in learning a bit more of what is out there that our clients might wish to use. No, I'm not building a system where anyone in the world can sign up, nor for a fortune 500 company, nor even one much smaller. Just for us at the moment, and perhaps do a bit of sharing to our clients from time to time.
I have so far found eyeOS and am also looking at ownCloud. Thanks Devin for that link.
You can do traditional shared files over a VPN across sites. You might look at ClearOS as a starting point for that and an imap server that everything should be able to access. It is going to be hard to beat google for online apps, though - or even a good webmail interface.