Cloud computing is incredible.
As this woman above shows, you can be anywhere. This picture was taken at the snow. As long as you have a decent internet connection, you can get into your system. During the COVID lockdown, many clients ran much of their business using the cloud from home. It works great. It is also great for linking if you have several shops into one system.
Conducting your computer activities through the cloud is now getting more popular.
Yet, cloud computing depends on your Internet connection. Here are some notable problems with the internet now.
Few people buy high commercial grade internet. I have seen $5,000 a month quoted. For most, it is not worth it, so they buy a cheaper system trusting the claims, which often dubious. If you are our clients, you can call us, and our internet people can help you here.
Now the internet is under strain since COVID hit. Traffic has skyrocketed. I have clients whose internet often now comes to a halt when it gets busy online.
When something goes, wrong technicians are harder to get them out to fix the problem. The days of the internet going down and a technician coming the next day is over. It is so frustrating. I know people who have now been waiting for a year to connect to broadband despite being told it was available.
With the cloud, sometimes it goes quickly and sometimes it takes forever. Get used to that, because it is not changing soon.
In many places, the internet is not up to scratch.
To make it work, you need all the business-critical software you run on the cloud to have *offline syncing*. If there is a network problem, at least you can work. When the access is restored, the software will automatically sync the files. This way, you run your system on the computers where you are *local mode*. So you have the speed of local computers and the benefit of the cloud.
To do this, you need cloud architecture. It involves emergency internet connections and computers that can handle the replication of data.
We call this hybrid cloud. We have it.
Also if you are running email over the cloud, consider using off-line mode eg Gmail.
