Cloud Applications have improved the business progress rate with the capability to provide mobility, flexibility and ease of use. Almost every business process, today, deploy cloud applications for the ease of utility and maintenance of resources in an optimal manner.

Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, once quoted, “Our industry is going through quite a wave of innovation and it’s being powered by a phenomenon which is referred to as the cloud” and he was so right. We could easily see the impact of cloud in our lives, like Google docs for online storage, iCloud for doing everything with an iPhone, wirelessly, except telephony. It’s not only limited to personal life of individuals but different enterprises and businesses are adopting cloud applications as a part of their routine operations to improve business focus and save cost of running an enterprise.

Cloud computing supports the practice of outsourcing applications, infrastructure or any other kind of technology service to an external vendor. This saves the cost of execution and maintenance of different operational resources for the company. Cloud applications are available for every domain which makes it a versatile tool for various business operations. Let’s have a look at some of the cloud services used by various domains:

1. CRM and Communications: Cloud provides features of maintaining a customer base thus act as an appropriate communication tool. Proper communication channels with high availability rate facilitate businesses to reach their potential clients for business.

   Salesforce.com is one such cloud application tool which provides an online CRM system for maintaining sales, marketing campaigns and reports related.

   Another tool for high quality voice and audio-visual communication called as skype is available. DimDim 5.5 is another tool for communication purposes.

2. Productivity tools: Google Apps and Google docs are made in use for document collaboration. Google docs is a free service while Google apps is a very low rental service which makes it an affordable tool for documents management. Apart from this, these are also compatible with Microsoft office which makes it a more versatile service than any other available in same category.
3. Storage and backup: Dropbox, crashPlan, Mozy etc. are some online storage tools which provides easy solutions for business for operational purposes. Companies are not at all required to install separate bulky data storage centers; rather they can rent these services on very low monthly rentals and all time availability.
4. IT tools: LogMeIn central is one of the utility available for setting up a connection between numbers of PCs. It provides machine to machine communication and connects number of systems via internet for tech support and provides a centralized snapshot of health status of different PCs inside an organization.
5. Finance and accounting: Bill.com and Outright.com are few online accounting tools used by firms as per their requirement. Enterprises don’t need to install similar accounting applications rather they just rent out such application at very low cost.

Other added advantage which makes cloud applications an easy solution for businesses is its payment facility. Cloud computing companies allow clients to pay as much as they use, so it’s a cost saving option for a business. Also, the part of usage can be upgraded or downgraded according to resource utilization, which adds-on the flexibility feature in deploying cloud applications.

Tags: cloud Application, Cloud Computing, cloud computing companies, Cloud for business, Google docs

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2012 at 2:17 PM and is filed under Cloud Computing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.