Introduction:

Everyone is talking about Cloud Computing nowadays. “I am a small business owner….Why should I worry about all this jargon? ” or “My business has nothing to do with IT and why should I bother knowing about  this new technology?”.

Are these questions running in your mind? If you are using the Internet to gather knowledge, market your products or for any other business purpose, you should understand how this technology can save time and money. Please read on.

What is Cloud Computing?

Do you remember the day when you created your own email id, started communicating to your friends and family, and later with your business stakeholders. Even today you can access your emails that were sent back in the 90’s. A server is a place in which all your emails are stored. Cloud computing works similarly, but in a bigger way, to keep your business communications secure, store your documents and take care of all IT related activities from a single place, aka a cloud. To put it in simple words, software and related services are handled over the internet through a browser.

Cloud Computing and Business Management:

When you prepare a presentation or a document, you share it with business people to make necessary changes through emails.Documents are being sent to and forth as attachments before getting into a final shape and saved in a common server which needs constant maintenance. How would you feel if I say you can live without the headache of maintaining your server or software? Yes, it is possible. Since cloud computing is maintained by a third party, it can take care of the server and other related problems, and you can focus more on developing your business.

Cloud Computing to Save Time:

Though it sounded comfortable initially with email attachments, you now know how tough it is  to maintain multiple versions of each document and how time consuming it is waiting until the other person sends the document after making the changes. If you forget to name it properly with an appropriate version control or the person who is responsible to make changes has fallen sick, well, I leave it to you to imagine how messy the situation could be.

Time management becomes easier when you have all the business documents, presentations, reports stored in a common server over the web. All those people involved in your business can access all these documents from different locations at any timezone. This is just an example of how you can save time with cloud computing.

Cloud Computing and Cost Saving:

If you check your latest balance sheet, you will find out that a certain percentage of cost is spent on upgrading the software or buying new licenses. With cloud computing you don’t have to worry about the expiration of your software licenses or upgrades, and the cost related to it. Also, these changes are happening over the internet, so you not only save the cost, but also the time it takes to upgrade.

Conclusion:

According to a recent survey results published on 5 Feb 2010, around 150 IT decision makers at small and large companies across the country found that three quarters of companies have identified the development of cloud computing as a priority for 2010. Though security and support system are considered as ‘yet to be developed’ areas of this technology, aggressive researchers are happening to circumvent this. It is advised to embrace this technology to be in touch with the world, so that there is a future to your business.