Hey You Jump On To My Cloud

I have to warn you that there will be no ranting this week as I actually found this subject really interesting.  Sad I know but to tell you the truth this subject confused me a bit to start with because when we looked at software as a service I couldn’t help but think of business software like Microsoft Office, but obviously there’s tons of other software that businesses use, excluding spreadsheets/databases etc.   

So, what is software as a service?  It’s when a vendor hosts software applications and makes them available to customers over a network, usually the internet, for a cost.  This video should help to explain it better than I can. 

I don’t suppose there can be many businesses left that don’t use IT and it’s difficult to get software that’s perfect for what you want so clearly there’s a huge market for customised software at low cost.  

It could well be that in the future we won’t buy software and instead we’ll all use “cloud computing”.  
 

Don’t you just love the visual that the phrase cloud computing gives you?  I can imagine lots of people sitting on a cloud with their laptops out typing away furiously!  

Anyway, cloud computing just means that you’re working on the internet instead of the hard drive of your computer.  Software as a service is part of the bigger picture.  This was the interesting part for me because at my work, we do all of our word processing on the PC then save the documents to the server instead of “my documents”.  I hadn’t really considered before that the maintaining of databases, servers and applications could all be done with cloud computing.   

So why would you want to use cloud computing?  

Well just now I can’t access the server from home as it’s not installed in my house (thankfully) but I could access software as a service anywhere and even from my mobile phone!   

Most companies that provide software as a service only charge for what you use and all the maintenance in terms of backups, updates, security is usually included.  The security may not be high enough for some but it depends on what you want to do but it is a reliable way of ensuring that all users have access to the same software.  

As you know, last week we had to create a wiki and we actually prepared a presentation too which we used Google Docs for.  Using the Google Docs software as a service allowed us to collaborate easily.  We could all access the presentation at anytime, from anywhere.  We all had the same software, powerpoint, and it was low cost (it didn’t cost a bean!).  

Come on, be honest, how many times have you had to borrow software from someone else or use a different PC to get access to an application?  

You can use software as a service.  Save yourself the hassle of tracking down what you want and you’ll always have the latest edition.  Give it a try.  You’ll be as surprised as I was.

It’s not just people you’ve never heard of too.  Well known names provide cloud computing such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo and IBM so if they’re involved it suggests to me that it’s the way forward.