The big technology companies are in the midst of a gold rush at the moment for their share of the cloud. Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are all battling it out to provide the best cloud storage for companies and personal use. This competitiveness has led to huge improvements in cloud services, with hundreds of businesses offering a range of services through it.
The cloud allows for a centralized data storage away that can be accessed from any device with the internet. So a huge company can store all it’s files in one place which can be accessed by any member of staff, anywhere in the world. This has been quickly adopted by most of the world’s major companies in some way which is partly why it’s become so profitable for tech companies to provide.
Many people will only have heard of the cloud in the last few months. The celebrity hacking scandal linked to Apple’s cloud network brought major headlines to this new service. The scandal showed how even the cloud was susceptible to hackers. Although it was quite shocking, the cloud movement marches on regardless as the benefits continue to massively outweigh the negatives.
If you’re business isn’t already using the cloud then there’s a good chance you could be doing things better. Below we’ve put together some of the most important cloud services for businesses.
Google Drive makes collaboration easy. Share documents with a co-worker or multiple teams with just one click and allow them to view, edit, comment and collaborate in real time. Previously, this sort of cross collaboration would take much longer.
Dropbox is another essential item in the cloud which automatically syncs your files to the cloud. If your laptop crashes and you lose everything, Dropbox will have all your items stored. This can also allow you to work remotely, a huge bonus for the staff of major companies.
Slack is a team communication tool similar to instant messaging apps such as Skype and MSN built for businesses. Conversations can be split on different tasks using hashtags which makes it easy to organise teams and projects. Files and images can be sent instantly and stored on the cloud, this centralised system saves space on emails and helps organise important work making it easier to find later on.
ITSM for IT businesses, service management networks such as SysAid offer complete, all in one control over the business as a pure web solution. The software offers a range of features helping staff organise their tasks and respond to problems using the internal ticketing system.
This is just a small range of some of the incredibly ways the cloud can make your business easier. For many small companies the cloud offer a range of services at a price point that can’t be matched. Whilst many major companies have been controversially moving away from the cloud to save money, we still recommend signing up to it if you’re a small to medium sized business.
