Tuesday 4 May 2010

How to Move Your Business to Cloud Computing

Adam Pash is a technology guru and the editor-in-chief of Lifehacker, a popular Website that focuses on technology, productivity, and making your life easier with your computer.

The Internet has changed the way people do nearly everything–from consuming media to performing research to maintaining relationships to communicating.

Its effect on business has been similarly wide ranging. And today, for mission-critical data, Internet-based computing–aka cloud computing–is introducing major changes to the way work is done.

Whether you’re ready to move your business operations to the cloud full time or just want to dip a toe in the water vapor, cloud integration offers significant benefits. Specifically:

With the right tools, you can have your data in the cloud in no time–and it will still play nicely with your desktop, laptop, or smartphone.

Don’t Make Me Ditch Microsoft Office!

The Internet has certainly changed the way people work, but desktop applications continue to outperform the Web on a number of fronts–especially in the business world. Fortunately, you can take advantage of the cloud without ditching desktop apps altogether. With the right tools and know-how, you can pair your significant business apps and data with the Web to keep everything in sync, accessible from any browser, and backed up to the cloud.

Note: There are more options for syncing data to the cloud than we can highlight in one article. Our focus here is on some of the most popular and trustworthy options–and in general, that means a large number of Google applications.

Microsoft Office Live

Since businesses tend to create lots of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, you probably use Microsoft Office regularly. Most Web alternatives still haven’t come close to matching the power of the Microsoft Office suite. But you do have a couple of good options for integrating the most popular Office apps with the Web.

Microsoft’s own Office Live Workspace service works with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; it aims to eliminate your need to carry a thumb drive, by letting you to store any of the three types of Office documents on the Live Workspace Website.

When you save a document to Live Workspace, you can view it from any browser, share it with other people in your workspace, and edit it on your desktop with Microsoft Office. The files are stored online on Microsoft’s servers, but you can open, edit, and save them with your desktop Office applications just as though they’re on your hard drive. Continue…

Full Source: WashingtonPost

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