Calvert Creative

Does your business still laboriously copy documents onto mini-drives or CDs to transfer information from one computer to another? Do you worry about reading someone else’s CD on your computer and unwittingly opening yourself up to a potential virus? Maybe you recently had a document on your work computer that you wished you had access to while working from your home computer.

You’re gonna love cloud computing.

Cloud computing is a phrase used to define online workspace that exists independently of your personal computer. There are applications (like WordPress, Flickr, and Gmail), platforms (where developers write and collaborate on code), and even infrastructure (storage and other resources) in the cloud.

Get a free Google Account

Most businesses can benefit tremendously from using the cloud in the application space. If you don’t already have a Google account, open one today. Then look around: you’ll see dozens of ways to use this free account for your business. You can measure all the statistics on your website with Google Analytics. You can manage all your subscriptions and feeds from other websites. You can set up Google Alerts on your name, competition, or keywords in your industry, and you can create, share, and collaborate with Google Documents.

Far more than word processing

Google Documents offers a basic word processing application you can use, but you can also create and share presentations, spreadsheets, forms, and take advantage of far more templates than you’ll ever need. The basic word processing docs have plenty of editing and formatting functions without being as bloated as Microsoft Word. You can also upload already-created documents onto Google Docs (just click the “upload” button on the GDocs homepage) to store or share. These docs can also be emailed from the cloud (if you have Gmail) or your own desktop email client.

Share and collaborate

To share your document, simply add the email address of the person you want to share the documents with. They must have a Google account for this to work, and you must add the email address they use for that account. When they log into their own Google Docs account, they will see the document you shared with them on their homepage.

The shared docs are only available to the people you share them with, and you get to specify whether the other persons you invite can only view, or can also modify the document. You also get to say whether those other people can share the document with others.

The ability to collaborate on and share documents via the cloud eliminates the need to copy to a storage device or travel to deliver your information. You can keep up with multiple revisions (and remember where you left the final copy), and you don’t have to worry about virus transmission, loosing the storage device, or finding your data has been corrupted because of a scratched disk, etc.

And it’s free.

Did I mention the “free” part? Some companies have quit paying for office software entirely, and are humming right along with free cloud-based applications. You could be next.

Leave a comment and tell what your favorite cloud application is. How is it changing the way you do business?