I have a friend who emails all the important documents on his computer to his Gmail account. He’s been doing it for years, and I’ve always thought it’s a smart way to make sure your important information stays safe, no matter what happens to your computer!

Fortunately, the big software and server companies feel the same way, and have come up with something similar, which is much easier to do. It’s called cloud computing, and just like my friend’s emailed documents, it puts all your important information on the Internet, where you can access it anytime, anywhere, using a username and password. .

Cloud computing is essentially a service that offers you online storage space for your documents and other information. It can be as simple as a free service like GoogleDocs, which also allows you to share your documents with others, or one of the paid online storage systems.

Because companies that provide these types of services focus on providing quality server space, their security is usually much higher than anything you can achieve within your own company, and their servers are usually fast and responsive, which Which means that even if your local area network isn’t great, you can share information quickly and easily.

When it comes to the benefits for the business owner, there are many that come to mind with cloud computing.

The first is that no matter what happens to your computer, your server, or anything else, your information is safe and accessible. I’ll never forget, back in the early nineties, before backups became the norm, when a friend’s computer was stolen. Nine months of work had been on the computer’s hard drive, and with no backups, everything had to be redone. Fortunately, there were hard copies of all the data, but it was still an arduous and time-consuming process to retrieve that information.

However, there is even a worse scenario than that. What if your computer is damaged, destroyed, lost, or stolen, and you don’t have hard copies and you don’t have a backup? Everything you had been working on would be lost and you would have to start all over again, from scratch.

Another important factor for many companies is storage space. When you consider the kind of data being created these days—videos, animations, presentations, photos, and graphic-heavy documents—it’s clear that businesses need bigger, faster computers all the time to process all that data. When you use cloud computing, you can basically work with a small computer, but you can still store and access very large files quickly and easily.

Then there is accessibility. We’ve already discussed sharing files with other users, on platforms like GoogleDocs, but the concept can be easily scaled using one of the largest cloud computing services. You can create two accounts, one for public employee access and one for sensitive information. Then, by simply sharing login information or providing access information to key employees, you could effectively collaborate with employees in different states or provinces, or even on the other side of the world.

The ability to access information from anywhere also gives you and your employees greater mobility, whether viewing a presentation at a client’s office or working on finance while out of the country. With a laptop and an Internet connection, you and your employees can have all the comfort of being in your office, while being anywhere in the world.

If you decide to take advantage of the cloud computing phenomenon in your own business, then you have several options. You can choose to test the waters with a free service like Google’s, or you can look for a service provider that offers smaller “starter” packages, with fewer users and less storage space. Be sure to choose a provider that offers month-to-month service, so if you want to switch, you’re not locked into a contract.

Cloud computing really solves all of the storage, security, and data integrity issues small businesses face, and it’s quite possible that in the next few years it will become the norm rather than the exception. So why not make sure your business is equipped for the future and get your information in the cloud?