Go Easy, Cloud

If you've read my book (come on there must be a few of you out there!), you'll know that I talk a fair bit about some of the myriad of bits of web based open source software that are out there that businesses could use at very low cost. There is CRM software like SugarCRM and vTiger, all sorts of content management systems (not just Joomla/Wordpress/Drupal), eLearning from the likes of Drupal, asset management, project management, issue tracking, internet telephony, the list goes on.

But the problem is that unless you have the skill set to set up and maintain your own web server (and let's face it most people don't), these can be quite hard to get using.

Enter Texas hosting company CloutHost, who tweeted me a couple of weeks ago about their new cloud offering, EasyCloud. Their service is based on a simple principle. They have a bunch (something like 70) of standard templates for a lot of the more popular free and open source web applications. So all you have to do is click a button and it's all set up for you at a pretty competitive fee ($25 a month for a small business option).

So, it looks like a pretty good option if you want some of this functionality without paying hefty management fees, although I do think the average non-techie business person might need a little hand holding to pick a product and do the initial setup.