Office productivity is at the forefront of every entrepreneur’s mind, especially as the technology that everyone in a business uses grows more and more sophisticated. As Wi-Fi has emerged as the dominant infrastructure for just about everything, the software companies, and the businesses that use them, have begun to rent the services and products they use instead of buying them. This is especially true in the domain of cloud services for small business.
The rise of business cloud services
Many businesses will use a variety of applications and software in their daily operations, so it is not uncommon for a company to purchase everything they need as a packaged bundle. Most businesses do not want to worry about storage and hardware limitations, so this has enabled the trend of subscribing to a platform that lets everybody use what they need and store their work on a web-based file sharing platform. These have become known as business cloud services. One of the most popular cloud services for small business is Microsoft’s Office 365. On this service, users can download and install the applications, have constant access to all updates as they are released, and can upload their work to a file sharing platform for seamless collaboration.
The problem with one cloud for all
Office is used very widely because everyone needs access to word processing, spreadsheets, and email, but for many businesses, the cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all cloud services available are not sufficient for what they do. One example would be an engineering firm that collects large amounts of data on ocean seismic activity. It could be that the sensors they use spit out data that is not very compatible with the servers and applications of AWS, Oracle, or google. Instead, they use a local cloud service for small business that can package together something more tailored to their unique needs.
Another issue is that updates sometimes do weird stuff to platforms that have been modified in some way. Suppose you were an elderly care provider that uses a web-based platform for residents to call for help in the event of a fall. It could be that the best voice automated hardware to use will only work on an obscure model of router that is not widely used. Because of this, the company that makes the router does not devote as much attention to general bug fixes with it, so every time there is a network update, the whole system crashes. In this case, the care provider might rely on a local cloud service for small business that has a lot of expertise on how to deal with networks that use that obscure routers to run their platforms. Just as there are firms who specialize in building hardware for a certain purpose, there are also firms who specialize in cloud-based solutions for equally specific things. Only time will tell where the next innovation takes us.