So what is a cloud service and why should I be interested?

Cloud Services are simply services that are internet based rather than based on your local server, for example an email or file server. Traditionally, if you wanted all the fancy calendar sharing and collaboration features you had no option other than to invest heavily in some very hefty hardware and set it up yourself. The trouble is running and support costs are very high and unless you have a larger business (10+ PCs) rarely affordable.

Using a Cloud Service means that all these features are available to anyone, and because they are priced monthly there is no expensive hardware outlay and the maintenance can be done very easily by anyone with a little bit of computer nouse.

The beauty of the Cloud is that you only pay for what you need now and do not have to plan for future expansion – if you need more mailboxes, these can be provisioned within the hour and you know what the cost of that new employee will be in IT terms.