Landscape Architect Articles

Working in a Cloud08-20-13 | News

Working in a Cloud

According to Focus Research, the building industry is now consuming IT services and solutions at an accelerating rate, needing to acquire more and more computing power, with bigger and faster servers to run the latest business critical applications.

Whether or not you were an early adopter of mobile technology, as a landscape professional your business probably relies heavily on it today. But besides just being able to easily communicate with your crew, your subcontractors, and your vendors when you are on-site or on the road, you can use your cell phone, tablet and everything else wireless for much more, such as access to your programs and documents stored elsewhere.

This is made possible by technology that you might have heard of but are not sure of - "the cloud." So what is this mysterious technology that allows you to, according to Microsoft, "access your project files wherever you have an Internet connection, and lets you easily add or remove users so you can adjust for as much as your business needs."

"The cloud" is another term for "cloud computing," which according to Eric Griffith of PC magazine, is a "means of storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer's hard drive."

The most basic utilization of the cloud is e-mail. If you are using Gmail, Hotmail or any of the rival services for your e-mail, you are using the cloud. But the cloud also lets you remotely retrieve and work on any of your stored files, just like it was information on the Internet -because it is on the Internet.

In spite of the convenience of cloud computing, storing your valuable information on the Web has its risks, which have to be weighed against the benefits to your business.