Cloud Computing

"What on earth?", I hear you say! A good start (if you like lots of detail) is the Wikipedia definition, but I'm planning a short update here to give an overview.

The simple approach is that Cloud Computing is where you are storing information on the web, rather than on your hard drive or a memory stick, and you do not necessarily know or care exactly where it is stored. So examples would be

• GMail but not Outlook
• Google Documents but not MS Word or Excel
• Facebook
• Flickr and other photo storage sites
• etc

Benefits - you can work from anywhere and know that you have all the information available at your fingertips. a personal "Paperless Office" - hence the title of this blog. And yes, I do operate a paperless office! Those of you who have seen my desk will laugh, but any hard copy here would have arrived by post and will ultimately be destined for my bin or my shredder.

Word of caution. If you are storing business information in this way, you ought to find out where the data is physically stored as any legal issues with the data could need to be handled under the laws of that country.