The last 18 months has been a pretty hectic time for Viridity, with a shift of focus from desktop to cloud solutions.  We have become dealers for Xero, Paycycle & Unleashed and now have many clients up on one or more of these products (with more being added every week). 

We use Xero & Paycycle internally, as well as a number of other cloud solutions: Workflowmax for our internal workflow, time recording and lead management, Google Apps for email and Box.net for our data storage / data transfer.  We continue to review other cloud solutions that might add value internally or for our clients.

Migrating to these products has involved a learning curve, but far less than with corresponding desktop solutions - and without these solutions we would not be able to provide the level of client service that has allowed us to grow our business.

Not everyone in the market is ready for cloud solutions - we still sometimes hear concerns about security, speed or other issues, but we are seeing a continual shift in the market as more people become comfortable with cloud solutions. 

It is clear (to me at least) that these concerns will continue to diminish over time: 5 years ago many people refused to use their credit card on-line, yet by 2011 the majority of us are comfortable with a wide range of on-line transactions.  Most projections of the IT world over the next 3 or 4 years see significant ongoing growth in take up of cloud solutions.

For those of you who currently prefer to keep you data on your local PC or server please keep reviewing what is available in the cloud - there are no right and wrong answers, so I am not suggesting that by rejecting the cloud you are "wrong".  But as the balance continues to tip you might be missing out on options that could deliver huge benefit to your business.  If you do decide the time is right to make that switch we would love to talk to you.

Last month one of my first blogs on this site was about using Google docs.  I had started using the service for some of my documents and spreadsheets, but not all: whilst the theory of having docs in the cloud where I could share and collaborate was fantastic, at times it was too slow, there were gaps in the functionality and the product just didn’t seem to be developing.

 

Well now all that has changed – a few days ago Google announced the release of their revamped Google Docs, and it looks very  good indeed!

 

 

 

You can check out more details here.