Amid the buzz over the launch of Apple's iCloud service, experts have warned that cloud computing is not a silver bullet for businesses that want to cut cost on IT expenses.

One option that businesses, particularly small enterprises that could not afford to experiment by moving everything to a cloud computing service provider and then shift to another solution is to give the service first a trial.

Small and medium enterprises (SME) and independent software vendors (ISV) in Australia that want to try first if cloud computing is the most appropriate solution for their business needs could avail of Fujitsu Australia's free two-month trial period for the Fujitsu's cloud computing service.

The offer is part of Fujitsu's way of expanding its business beyond the enterprise and government sector which it has successfully penetrated.

"We have introduced this trial offer as an added incentive that will appeal to smaller organizations such as ISVs and SMEs to drive the development and use of Australian applications. It will also allow organizations of all sizes to test the suitability of the cloud locally," Fujitsu Executive General Manager and Chief Technology Officer Craig Baty said in a statement.

The free offer, which will end January 2012, covers all of Fujitsu's cloud offerings - infrastructure-, software- and platform-as-a-service models.

It is hosted in Fujitsu's data centre in Homebush, Sydney which the firm assured has a multi-tier security and could be accessed through Web interface.

The Fujitsu offer for SMEs covers 2 x 1 GHz CPU, 3.4 GB of memory, 10 GB of OS space, 50 GB storage and one public IP address. The offer for ISVs is for a smaller free config, one CPU, 1.7 GB of memory and 30 GB of additional disk space.

Fujitsu was recognised in February by analyst Longhaus as the second most trusted provider of enterprise grade cloud services in Australia. It is one of the founding members of the newly launched OzHub, Australia's national cloud computing council.

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