onitoring Runaway Costs, Service Logs, and Congestion on Transmissions to the Cloud Managing cloud-based operations is an ongoing task. It involves the following: Monitoring costs Are costs increasing in line with business growth? If not, what is causing the increase? Are particular staff or departments using an unnecessary amount of computer resources? Tracking congestion on broadband links connected to the cloud - Is higher capacity needed? www.TechnicalPDF.com . Is there too much capacity? Monitoring cloud providers' reports on outages or other glitches Checking out user complaints Are broadband links congested or are complaints coming from people accessing the cloud remotely using their cable modems or public Wi-Fi services that don't have adequate broadband bandwidth? Making sure that cloud applications are compatible with users dialing in from mobile devices Making sure that providers are adhering to contractual obligations for uptime, availability, and security Integrating Applications Located at Different Providers There are now web applications that enable companies to integrate or synchronize applications with each other when they are located at multiple cloud providers' sites. This enables companies to compare data located at different cloud providers' sites. This is helpful when applications from the same company need to be on different specialized providers' cloud-based data centers. Oracle, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com are examples of providers who offer cloud services for applications such as Microsoft's Azure, and Oracle's database services for specialized data centers. Integration is often needed to develop meaningful information. For example, the sales department may need sales figures compared to financial data. If the financial data is at, say, Amazon, and data for sales is at Salesforce.com, it may be difficult to determine the gross margins on products. If, for example, a NetSuite-mid- sized ERP-application is at Amazon, the sales department can see how many widgets were sold at Salesforce.