What is cloud computing and online or cloud point of sale?

What is cloud computing?

The practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer.

Traditionally, when running a business, you needed to purchase a computer or hardware for each employee or area where you wanted to work. And then, on top of that, purchase software licenses for each of the computers, so your employees had the tools they needed, to perform their work. This could become quite costly, time consuming and resource heavy with infrastructure and setup, as you need to upgrade both hardware and software licenses, not to mention keeping track of hardware failures, security, virus protection and data backup in case of failure

In a cloud computing system, there's a significant workload shift. Local computers no longer have to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to running applications. The network of computers that make up the cloud handles them instead. Hardware and software demands on the user's side decrease. The only thing the user's computer needs to be able to run is the cloud computing system's interface software, which can be as simple as a Web browser, and the cloud's network takes care of the rest.

There's a good chance you've already used some form of cloud computing. If you use online banking or have an e-mail account with a Web-based e-mail service like Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, then you've had some experience with cloud computing. Instead of running an e-mail program on your computer, you log in to a web e-mail account remotely. The software and storage for your account doesn't exist on your computer -- it's on the service's computer cloud.

What is cloud retail management software or cloud point of sale?

Cloud retail management software, also referred to as “online point of sale”, serves the same function as retail management software that you would install on your computer, except it runs on our servers and you access it using your web browser, over the Internet. Your data is securely stored and processed on our servers—or “in the cloud”. This means you are able to access your business data from anywhere and using any device, as long as you are connected to the Internet.

There are many benefits to using cloud retail management software. In addition to the flexibility of accessing your data from anywhere, you never need to install software on any device and updates are automatic. Your data is automatically backed up, data transfer is fully encrypted, and the firewall and security protection of the servers is actively maintained and monitored by high-level professionals, which is much higher security than many small business networks and laptops and devices.