The ‘cloud’ is the current darling of the high tech world. It is creating jobs for some and taking away for others. Think of the cloud as a rented web server. Instead of maintaining your own equipment, you rent an ip addressable server at a remote location.
Businesses put their computer systems on clouds for two main reasons:
1. Less maintenance cost.
2. Equal access to all.
Less Maintenance Cost
Software applications are installed and run on a computer located in a remote location rather than on your property. No need to own and maintain expensive equipment.
You will need, though, a high speed and large bandwith internet connection to satisfy the reliability of access. No need to hire a staff of expensive hardware support employees for on-site assistance. Hardware and network services are taken care of by the cloud hosting company.
Equal Access to All
Less need to be concerned what type of computer the user has. Everyone uses similar scripts to access the same software.
When the new version of Excel or Word or Access is made available, the remote cloud support personnel install it hassle free.
What are the negatives?
If your internet connection goes down, you cannot access the cloud. If your software is installed on a local computer, then whether the internet is working or not is a moot point.
You need to make sure that your application can be loaded readily onto the cloud. You should never accept a cloud service that tells you that you need to send the installation cd to their location. The cloud service must give you a way to insert the cd in a local workstation and mount it (or connect) to their server.
Do not expect the cloud support staff to have knowledge of your business applications. Their job is to support and maintain the server and network services on which it is hosted.
Accounting Software
Accounting software can be put on the cloud. Don’t expect the cloud support personnel to help you unless they also happen to be authorized support for the accounting system. The advantage of putting your accounting system on the cloud is when you have many users who are at different locations and need a simple way to access it as readily as anyone else.
For more information, call (773) 502-5771 .
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