Computing in the clouds

I work for a company with 20 employees across five offices, and we're wondering if we can get network-style functionality - automated backups, data sharing, shared diary and contact database systems - at a cut price using "cloud computing".
Lee Corless

"Cloud computing" involves doing things using remote servers on the web, rather than servers that you install and own yourself. Assuming you all have fast, reliable internet connections, then the smaller and more spread out the company, the more sense cloud computing makes. Your company sounds a good candidate. However, there are drawbacks. It's essential that your company keeps its own copies of all data, because online services can be unavailable (Gmail was recently down for hours, and "hangs" often). Users can be locked out by network and password problems, and suppliers have been known to accidentally delete records, or go bust. If you don't have control of your own data, then you are betting the company on someone who has little or no interest in your survival. Thus, moving to the cloud solves some problems, but it introduces others that may be hazardous to your corporate health.

There are other drawbacks. Online services are slower and generally much less powerful than desktop alternatives. You may not need all the features, but slower operation comes at a significant cost in staff time. It therefore makes sense to do things locally if you do them a lot, and in the cloud if only infrequently. Another problem is that you can end up using online applications from many different sources, so you have a confusing mixture of user interfaces and grab-bags of poorly integrated data. Finally, there may be regulatory and privacy issues when sensitive data is not under your exclusive control.

Google Apps is an obvious choice for a cloud service but, although we use them at the Guardian, they're somewhat primitive and better suited to amateur and very small business use. Zoho's Office Suite is far more comprehensive, more powerful (especially the spreadsheet), and much more like a real application suite. General Electric is one company that is dumping Google Apps to try Zoho. The most likely rival to Zoho is Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), which has just been launched in the UK. BPOS is just getting off the ground, but if you use Microsoft software such as Office, Exchange and SBS, the Small Business Suite, it should make the move to cloud computing easier.