My Office on the Beach in the Cloud

Maybe you have heard of the term "computing in the cloud". It is most certainly the current trend for information systems. I know you have heard of Google and you should know that Google is a huge driver of the whole computing in the cloud trend.

Basically what it means is that you take advantage of high speed internet access and move some, many or all of your local software applications out of your office and onto the internet. Remember the last time you had to update Microsoft Office on all the PC's around your office. Did you enjoy that? Do you have a network in your office with a server? Do you even have a clue where to start when it crashes? How often do you actually backup the data on the PC's in your business and have you EVER actually taken those backups and tested to see if you really can recover lost files using the backup?

So STOP IT! Now you can move all those activities onto a service provider on the internet. And yes Google is one of those service providers. Check out Google Docs. You can take all those MS Office applications off your local machine and put them up on Google's site.

You no longer update the software on your local PC.
You no longer worry about who has the most recent version of your spreadsheet.
You no longer worry about forgetting to take your flash drive with a copy of the presentation on it.

Simply log on from any PC anywhere that has internet access. Log onto your Google account and there are your spreadsheet, word processing and email files. Did I mention that your slide presentations are there also? Pretty cool right?

Want to collaborate with co-workers? You decide who has access to what files and you can share as many or few of your files as you want. All they need is to access the internet, log on as a user that you choose to share with and your co-worker has access to all of the files you decided to share with them.

Ok so now you say, I finally learned how to adjust margins in Word. I don't have the energy to learn a new program. All I can say is try it. Easily 99% of the functionality works just like the programs you are already accustomed to using.

One last thing. How safe is it to have all this stuff out in cyber space, what if something crashes? Do you seriously think Google is not better at backups and redundant systems than you and your local office network?

Ok you say Wray is a CPA, why does my accountant care? Well I want to set you up for accounting in the cloud. The best solution I have found currently is Quickbooks Online. There are others, but that would take a whole other blog to discuss. If you have a small business you probably are already using Quickbooks, so I am going to stick with that one. Now you can put all your accounting information online. What is the advantage? Your CPA (hopefully me) can have access to your accounting system in real time. All those same advantages of online backups, redundancy and other good stuff applies here also. Need a report for the meeting with your banker tomorrow? Email me and I can get you a set of financial statements current as of "right now". Need me to analyze your inventory turnover, all I have to do is log on and run the reports and you have your information.

The best part for me is that just like you can access information from any computer with internet access, so can I. As soon as I get all my clients to move to accounting in the clouds, I am moving to the beach and doing all my work from my lounge chair.

Thanks Google.


When you want to start computing in the cloud, email and we will discuss the specifics. Wray