Cloud computing for small businesses: it’s time to follow the herd
January 31, 2013
Grazed from The Guardian. Author: Chris Harding.
The latest market forecasts for cloud computing are predicting 30% annual growth in the industry, as more and more people adopt the latest technology to store information in a virtual space. But cloud computing isn’t just for data, you can also use it to run applications and software remotely, without being tied to one computer.
For a small businesses, outsourcing IT to the cloud lowers the need for specialist skills and frees managers to concentrate on the core business. It may cost slightly more than in-house IT, but this is often outweighed, as it can sometimes enable a small company to take a "big company" approach to problems by increasing efficiency…
The farming industry is a good example. Most farmers run relatively small businesses, but they still have to deal with data processing such as accounts and payroll. There is also a surprising amount of specialised information processing which is usually done by hand. For example, a dairy farmer owning 300 milking cows can spend 90 minutes per day creating manual data records and calculating production metrics. There is a cloud service specifically designed for dairy farmers that can relieve him of that. Similar cloud services are also available for poultry and arable farmers, and a multitude of other sectors…
Read more from the source @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/small-business-network/2013/jan/30/cloud-computing-for-small-businesses