Cloud lowers cost of entry

I had my cloud+social-media epiphany a couple of weeks ago. It was a downpour of revelation, a torrent of possibilities.

The epiphany took place under particular circumstances: a Ruby on Rails project, hosted with Heroku, and using GitHub commercial version control.

However, the potential I've unearthed for myself is universal in application.

In summary? Cloud computing lowers the cost of entry. I know, many of you dab-hand tech folk have known this for aeons and sigh benevolently as poor-old-me plays mental catch-up. But it is something you have to experience for yourself to truly appreciate it (like scrumpy, Drupal and riding a motorbike).

The longer version? A cloud computing project is quick and easy to setup and administer, scalable (both ways) and so much cheaper to get off the ground than the traditional room full of servers. Combined with a handful of seasoned contractors, Google Docs, some trusty frameworks and an agile game plan, you are in business.

This has also been my introduction to GitHub, and I must say that I think it is brilliant. The business model works a treat: Open Source projects are free, commercial projects cost. The social aspect encourages involvement for non-technical front-enders like myself, and it's easy to get up and running with git the program.

Ditto heroku. What is particularly sweet is that they offer a basic hosting plan for trying stuff out, and then you are able to ramp up your resources when you need them. (It would be nice if Acquia had a similar taster development hosting plan to entice people in to Drupal world, maybe sometime in the future? ;) Best of all, the heroku website is properly purple throughout, with lots of lovely little illustrations.