The Cloud, Day 27: All the Rest of the Cloud

18.06.2012
From a consumer perspective revolves around , , email, and perhaps a bit of productivity. Some of those are important for small and medium businesses (SMBs) as well, but really only scratch the surface of what the cloud has to offer for businesses.

What about all the rest of the cloud-based services? SMBs will be happy to know there’s no shortage of business and productivity tools available from the cloud, and new products and services are constantly being introduced as enterprising developers come up with new, innovative ideas.

Let’s take a look at a few:

Communication

of digital communication for most businesses, but instant messaging runs a close second in many cases, and video chat is growing in popularity as well. This is one area where cloud based services excel, and where there are plenty of free options available.

Facebook and Google+ both have integrated messaging you can use to chat with other contacts on the given social network. Skype also has an instant messaging element, and all three provide video chat services as well. The only real potential down side to all three of these is that the person you want to communicate with must also be on the same service in most cases.