Simply put, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. You typically pay only for cloud services you use, helping you lower your operating costs, run your infrastructure more efficiently, and scale as your business needs change.
Benefits
Cloud computing is a big shift from the traditional way businesses think about IT resources. Here are some common reasons organizations are turning to cloud computing services:
Prior to cloud, most accounting software was desktop-based. In other words, the actual application was installed and run from the hard drive of your office desktop computer. This has a number of drawbacks, including limited access to your data, the need for constant software updates and the ongoing cost of backing up all this financial information.
Cloud accounting software
Cloud accounting (or online accounting) has all the same functionality as desktop accounting, but moves the whole process to the cloud and expands upon it. There’s no desktop application – you log in to an always-up-to-date online solution and all data is safely stored on a cloud server. Most cloud platforms will also have an open API, which basically means third party software can connect with your system to provide even further value to you as a business owner.
