For some small business owners, spending time in the
office is surprisingly becoming more of a luxury. With days spent out on sales
calls, networking, running errands, or generally being “out-and-about,” owners
often have limited time for staying on top of day-to-day operations.
Luckily, new advances in technology offer helpful methods for staying connected while on-the-go. A few years ago, mobile computing meant lugging a laptop around with you everywhere you went. Today, owners and employees can accomplish an extraordinary amount of tasks using a “thin client” and a cloud model for business computing.
A “thin client” is a device that is used primarily as a display and input device which is connected to a remote (or cloud) server, making storage capacity and processing power less significant. Examples of “thin clients” include netbooks, smart phones, ultra-light laptops, and tablets like the iPad.
Your business’s data and productivity applications, like Microsoft Office and QuickBooks, reside in the cloud. You can think of it like the old mainframe/terminal model, where data lived and heavy-duty processing occurred on the centrally located mainframe and workers interacted with the mainframe through terminals at their desks. In this case, the mainframe is the cloud and the terminals are the “thin clients.”
Now, your “terminal” goes wherever you go, and you can access the “mainframe” from anywhere you have an Internet connection!
The cloud and thin client model provides many advantages to small business owners. Imagine striking up a conversation with a potential new customer at a store and being able to pull up a presentation on ROI using your Smart phone. Or imagine nurses in a medical practice having to ability to access diagnostic documentation and patient records from a lightweight tablet instead of a bulky laptop (not to mention the ability to update the records in real-time).
The best thing about this model is that you don’t need a Fortune 500-sized IT budget to take advantage of this amazing technology.
Luckily, new advances in technology offer helpful methods for staying connected while on-the-go. A few years ago, mobile computing meant lugging a laptop around with you everywhere you went. Today, owners and employees can accomplish an extraordinary amount of tasks using a “thin client” and a cloud model for business computing.
A “thin client” is a device that is used primarily as a display and input device which is connected to a remote (or cloud) server, making storage capacity and processing power less significant. Examples of “thin clients” include netbooks, smart phones, ultra-light laptops, and tablets like the iPad.
Your business’s data and productivity applications, like Microsoft Office and QuickBooks, reside in the cloud. You can think of it like the old mainframe/terminal model, where data lived and heavy-duty processing occurred on the centrally located mainframe and workers interacted with the mainframe through terminals at their desks. In this case, the mainframe is the cloud and the terminals are the “thin clients.”
Now, your “terminal” goes wherever you go, and you can access the “mainframe” from anywhere you have an Internet connection!
The cloud and thin client model provides many advantages to small business owners. Imagine striking up a conversation with a potential new customer at a store and being able to pull up a presentation on ROI using your Smart phone. Or imagine nurses in a medical practice having to ability to access diagnostic documentation and patient records from a lightweight tablet instead of a bulky laptop (not to mention the ability to update the records in real-time).
The best thing about this model is that you don’t need a Fortune 500-sized IT budget to take advantage of this amazing technology.
No comments:
Post a Comment