What is a Cloud Solution?

I recently attended a networking event and met a chap who said many years ago he had been employed as a 'Cloud educator'. I was quite interested in this as I find there is probably still a place in the job sector for these people. Hence me writing about it.

What is the Cloud and how does it all work? Does it mean that my data is up in the white fluffy clouds when you say Cloud Solutions?

Let's take a step back...to something we all understand...

We all know how software is installed on a computer and when we want to use it we will switch on the computer and click on an icon that will hopefully in a few minutes start-up, and show us what we are looking for. You may need to login to the system before you can access your information or if we were being a bit more technical we could call it data. Well, there you go I have said the word...yes...data!

You then proceed to fill in all the data you need to process for that day, saving periodically throughout the day. You will then hopefully do a backup of the work you've done and store it somewhere safe.

So what is the Cloud and how will this help me and my business?

Well, this is in simple terms a computer/server which is not located in the office that is accessible to you securely via the internet/WiFi. This means that you do not have to upgrade the equipment as it becomes old; you do not have to apply software patches when security updates come out or even have to make backups as all this is done for you by the provider.* It is a stable place to have your software running. In many instances we find Clients that need to have access to up to date records when out of the office visiting their own Clients. They have to manually update records onto laptops before meetings in order to give them the power of accuracy. With Cloud Solutions these Clients have access to these records in real-time. Their team may be working on the records until the time of the meeting. No downtime! Notes can then be collected from the meeting directly onto the system and in return accessed by the team who can then start to process the next step.