CRM News Software Data: Choosing the Public or Private Cloud

Still, the transition to the cloud still leaves some company leaders wondering about the right place to host their customer relationship management data. "The cloud," as experts have come to call the collection of data centers storing corporate information, still has some faults. Sharing data center resources carries the perceived risks of security issues and the real threat of downtime. Companies willing to take on extra risk generally enjoy heightened response times and greater productivity. But media coverage of high profile outages at major data centers has dampened some CIO's enthusiasm for distributed computing.

Therefore, some CRM software vendors have created service packages that include, in their terms, a "private cloud." Like a traditional dedicated server rack, resources are used only by a single client company. However, with help from blade servers, RAID storage arrays, and other tools, vendors promise the ability to ramp up quickly during times of peak demand--without relying on a shared server farm.

According to industry analysts, recessions often force companies to make hard decisions about their vendors and platforms. While some CRM software companies have tentatively extended invitations to the "private cloud," other vendors rely on the scalability and redundancy of the public cloud for their clients' success. Either way, may current CRM software subscribers will spend time over the coming months requesting quotes and exploring the kind of data infrastructure necessary to take their businesses to the next level.