How Working In The Cloud Could Save Your Small Business Money

There’s a good chance you’ve heard discussion of working ‘in the cloud’, using ‘cloud storage’, and similar terms. It all sounds a bit abstract.

Perhaps because it sounds somewhat hard to pin down, many small business owners and enterprising individuals end up not making the most of the tools available to them – a real shame, as embracing cloud technologies can not only save you money, but can save time, provide a more productive workflow and give you greater security and peace of mind.

So what do people mean when they talk about ‘the cloud’?

Essentially, the cloud is a model in which software and information are stored on the internet, on secure, remote servers.

So for instance, you might decide that your files be kept or backed up on the servers of a company specialising in cloud storage. This would mean several things:

• You could save money on servers. Storing gigabyes or even terabytes of files on clients, communications or whatever else you have saved can get very costly when you keep and maintain file servers yourself. If you choose to save this information remotely however, you can get very reasonable monthly or annual rates. Plus, you’ll save time on acquiring and maintaining servers, and this way you need only a minimum of technical knowledge.
• Your files will be backed up. Security experts will tell you that off-site backups are a good idea, so that important or confidential files will survive an event like flooding or fire at your work location.
• Your files can be securely accessed anywhere. You can log in to your cloud server anywhere and begin working with all your files as normal. Security is a top priority for cloud computing providers, so there’s no downside to having this added flexibility.

And why stop there? Storing your files online is all well and good, but many companies make use of cloud software such as office suites. Microsoft and Google both offer word processing and spreadsheet software that you can use in a browser, in addition to their file storage solutions.

The advantages to this are more than just cost-saving. It’s not just a means of support for small businesses as even huge companies with money to burn acknowledge these tools’ use. Cloud software allows for collaboration between many parties, as multiple team members can for example work together on a spreadsheet, no matter where they are in the world.

Cloud computing sounds like a lot to take in, but some of the technologies will already be familiar to most people. Your email, for instance, has always been saved on a server, so when you access it outside of the office, you’re already working in the cloud.

The term might be something of a buzzword, but the advantages that working online can offer are very real, and continually developing.