Small Business in the Cloud
It used to be that talk of clouds usually meant rain. Nowadays, it’s about storage, functionality, accessibility, ease of use, and even cost. This evolving trend is no longer just for the big boys. It’s becoming an increasingly more small business success model.
This amazing technological evolution allows businesses to fully run their applications and databases off of the internet much the same as banks, stores, email, and social networking. It opens the doors to new possibilities and lessens the risks of others. Cloud Computing is predicted to be one of the top technological strategies for success.
This billion dollar industry is valued at least in the 8 billion range, with over 3 billion of that being from the United States alone. But what are all these people doing in the Cloud?
The 8 most popular Cloud aps are:
- Self-scheduling
- Database storage and backup
- Human resources
- Online payments
- Accounting software
- Document management including uploads
- Sales and marketing
Now we know what they are doing, but why? It seems whether small businesses are trying to develop sales and marketing teams, improve their human resource or accounting programs, develop self-scheduling or payment programs, the Cloud is a great answer for a few reasons.
Cost
Affordable
Budget friendly
No expensive outside IT support
Provider maintains servers, upgrades, updates
Accessibility
Internet connection - all you need
Great for on the road
Ease of Use
No installations or downloads
Easy to understand and use
Often free trial to test out the product
Though there are lots of aps out there to choose from, here are ten super ones (grouped together by functionality) that could save you some big bucks.
1. Fresh Books – accounting manager
2. Quick Books – accounting manager
3. Outright – finance manager
4. Constant Contact – customer relations
5. Batchbook – customer relations
6. Doodle – Polling scheduling
7. Dropbox – file sharing
8. Picnic – photosharing/editing
9. Crashplan – backup service
10. Carbonite – backup service
Each ap has its own idiosyncrasies on the Cloud just like they do on your home or office PC. Check out a variety of the opportunities available to you to be sure you get the functionality that works best for you.
