With the rapidly increasing maturity of the Cloud, the ever growing advantages of the concept become more obvious. There are now so many Cloud based applications available that if required a business could be run without ever needing to resort to the basic Windows type PC software.
I have been experimenting with a suite of applications from Zoho.com which include word processing, spreadsheets, Power Point type presentations and almost every type of application that couild be used in daily business operations. It also enables the setting up of your own Wiki and CRM applications.
I used the word processing and spread sheet recently on a client’s project on which I was working and which, due to certain circumstances, involved working from various locations and using different laptops at certain times. The flexibility of logging on from anywhere and accessing the project summed up one of the principal advantages of the Cloud.
The software provided by Zoho, whilst not as feature rich as Microsoft, is , nevertheless, growing in functionality. Word documents and spreadsheets can be imported and exported to and from Zoho which enables portability and integration. All in all it was a trouble free exercise and greatly facilitated the completion of the project.
There are other similar suites available – notably Google Docs, but I haven’t yet come across anything quite so comprehensive.
The big question, of course, is that with the ever increasing sophistication of Cloud applications, why would anyone want to restrict themselves to one location – one PC?
Hi Richard,
The issue with cloud computing is that it doesn’t fit in will peoples psychological need to have possessions. Unfortunately cloud computing or indeed in the 1970’s time-sharing doesn’t address that need.
For a business its the fear of not having “control” over one’s own data. That doesn’t mean its safer on site. people just believe it is.
I’ve used zoho’s crm and sales package and its perfectly adequate, and probably better than what most SME’s have, but its still struggles because its on a SaaS platform
Hi Laurence – thanks for the comment. It is in an interesting point of view, but not one that I would agree with (no surprise there!) The data is always available and can be downloaded onto local hardware if required – after all, what about internet banking?