Looking at the clouds: The future of computing

Today, you are likely running your business primarily from a desktop or laptop, accessing programs on your harddrive to produce information and deliverables for your clients. But that is changing. Soon, we’ll just be running touch screens from anywhere because all of our information is online.

As I’m sure most of you already know, the big shift I’m referring to is from harddrives to “the cloud”. The cloud is a way to understand the web and its relationship to how we run our business (and our lives too, I suppose). A good example is IAC-EZ: Instead of keeping your bookkeeping on your harddrive, you use an online service… sometimes called “Software-as-a-Service” or “SaaS”.

There are a few advantages:

• First, we are no longer reliant on hardware to store and interpret the data. All we need is hardware to interface with the data.
• Second, we rarely need to worry about upgrades, back-ups, and older versions not able to open newer versions of the same program. These are done for us by the SaaS vendor, so even if our hardware goes down, we can switch easily and be back up and running in no time.
• Third, the growth of interconnectedness among SaaS vendors means that you can run IAC-EZ and Freshbooks and get them to “talk” to each other.
• Fourth, costs are easier to manage. We need fewer and fewer programs and lighter and lighter hardware to access and work with information. While SaaS might cost more over a lifetime of use, the costs are much easier to swallow than the high up-front costs associated with one-time software purchases that will be obsolete in six months anyway.

There certainly are drawbacks to cloud computing, too, but the rise of SaaS suggests that users see value in moving to the cloud.

So, where are we headed? You could theoretically run an entire business with just a screen and an internet browser: By running GoogleDocs or Zoho for some of your word processing, presentation, project management, and CRM needs, and by running IAC-EZ for bookkeeping (of course I was going to say that!) you don’t need any on-your-computer software.

Now that the iPad is out and growing in popularity (and clones are sure to follow), we should see this kind of interface-with-the-cloud operation happening more and more.

Want more information about the cloud? Learn more here.  And, be sure to check out information about cloud-based bookkeeping software interview we participated in last year. Check it out here.

Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ

Sizzling Summer Savings

We want to help make your bookkeeping EZ because ultimately we want to help you run profitable businesses.

So, from time to time, we like to suggest some free tools or information that might help you run your business while keeping your expenses down. Here are some of our favorites right now:

• For the Twitter User: HootSuite and TweetDeck. HootSuite lets you tweet, schedule your tweets, manage multiple accounts, track your statistics, and more. Tweetdeck lets you tweet from your desktop (without having to sign in) and to sort and monitor tweets in different ways. Both of these can help you use Twitter more effectively as a business marketing tool.
• CRM: There are many CRM systems out there; a lot of them cost money to use but Zoho has a CRM system that you can use for free. (Actually Zoho has a lot of tools that you can use for free).
• Consolidated IM: There are so many chat apps out there (Yahoo, Gchat, MSN, AOL; need I go on?) and some people who are on all of them need to sign in and keep them all updated. Fortunately, Meebo is a central location that allows you to monitor them all in the same place. You can even set up private or public chat rooms. Very helpful!

Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ