5 Ways Cloud Computing Can Streamline Your PC Use

Michael Irving is a freelance writer and blogger, who’s investigating colocation options for his small home business.

Cloud computing is a fascinating area of IT that’s quickly emerging to streamline many processes we take for granted. Whether you’re running a business or looking to improve your personal computer use, the cloud can help.

Wondering how this piece of technology can best benefit you? Here are five ways that cloud computing can help streamline your PC use.

Portability

Perhaps the simplest and most useful benefit that cloud services offer is portability. No more carrying things between work and home on USB drives or CDs, or emailing files to yourself. Cloud storage means files are accessible from potentially any device with an internet connection. You won’t accidentally leave important files at home anymore: save it to the cloud, and it will be in the office before you are.

Collaboration

Maybe you already have a reliable system for transporting your own files. That’s good. But we all know that collaborating with others can throw the most carefully laid plans out the window. Sure, you might never forget to update your USB stick with the latest versions of your work, but co-workers may not be so organised.

Easy access to the cloud from anywhere means that anyone contributing to a project can simply save the work as normal, and have it automatically update the online version. They can’t forget to save the work, surely. In this way, the cloud streamlines that most painful of practices: version control.

Less hardware is required

While programs like Microsoft Office aren’t too intensive on your computer’s memory, others, like the Adobe Creative Suite, can be. And once it’s on your hard drive, the license system makes it difficult to work anywhere else, without purchasing another license and installing the software on another device.

Running these programs through the cloud has several advantages. For one, your PC only really needs enough processing power to access the internet and run the operating system. The heavy lifting is handled by the servers. Pairing back the hardware requirements will save you money both immediately and in the long run, as you won’t need to update as often to keep up with advancing technology. And, of course, it keeps your PC clear of the clutter of rarely-used programs.

Secure data storage

If digital data storage is a key element of your business, the cloud can provide safer and more cost-effective alternatives to setting up and managing your own storage.

Third-party colocation data centres, such as Macquarie Telecom, are designed with security and stability in mind. The infrastructure will let you access your information from anywhere with an internet connection, keep it secure to ensure only you and those you authorise can access it, and protect against data loss with backups and advanced safety measures within the facility.

You may believe it’s best to only trust yourself with your vital data, but data centres can take the stress and expense out of the equation for you, without sacrificing availability or security.

Expandable – multiple servers as required

Online businesses can suffer if their servers can’t support the traffic they receive. Traditional single-server hosting may not be able to handle a sudden increase in visitors to your site, meaning some customers may be left waiting, and will likely take their business elsewhere.

In the past, the only way to prevent this was to purchase additional servers to support the traffic flow – a risky strategy in itself, if the traffic levels fluctuate.

Cloud computing streamlines this, in terms of cost and effort. From the cloud, your business can automatically connect to as many servers as the traffic requires, without the need for you to estimate a specific amount. When your visitors increase, the host will assign as many additional servers as required. When it wanes, the servers hosting your content will decrease, to prevent unnecessary expenses.