Im a big proponnet of cloud tech and have been usining it for years. We currently use several clud services:

• Google Apps: been using it for 3 years now. Mail, Calendar, Apps, Sites, Docs and chat all work wonderfully. Its simple. Affordable ($50/user/year). Powerfull and incredibly easy to impliment. And it has its own version of the Apple App Store where you can add other services such as mass mailing and CRM.
• Salesforce.com: Powerful cloud CRM with its own app store and some integration into Google. but there are other great ones out there: Sugar, Norada 360, etc
• Carbonite: Online backup and remote file access…again very affordable.
• Dropbox: Usefull for moving files between computers on the fly
• Mailchimp: professional looking email newsletters
• Surveymonkey: Online surveys.
• We were using Plan Plus but switched to FP solutions…which is a desktop software…however they will be going cloud this year.

All of this stuff works on my iPad too.

Looked at Microsofts online solution and Im relly not impressed. VERY scaled back version of office. I see little advantage over what Google Docs offers. 

Also check out zoho. Incredible product suite.

In the end doing all this has made us more mobile, reduced the cost of PCs (as we only need to run web browsers for most stuff), reduced IT costs and disaster recovery would be simple, if ever needed.

Post edited 9:24 pm – July 14, 2011 by PG

Kevin Cork mentions many of these new services in his column this month.

http://www.advisor.ca/my-pract…..ouds-52165

We are thinking of the Windows solution.

Does anyone have experience with any of these?