Cloud Experiences 103

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We did indeed, finally, thankfully, get rid of our exchange server – and moved several systems to The Cloud: e-mail, accounting, and back-up. We are very happy with all of our researched choices for software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers.

There are lots of cloud back-up offerings, but we went with SpiderOak because of their zero knowledge encrypted platform – they don’t even have a record of your password! While all six (6) of our computers are accessible to one another, the best part is the “synchronized” folder on every computer. Open a file on one computer and any changes are reflected on every other computer. Perfect for templates and other common files required wherever (could also work for photos and music). You can also set up client specific folders with unique log-in passwords – so clients have private access to their data.

We had a slow internet connection to start with and it took a week to upload my photographs (have since increased speed 10x). So I’m not sure you would want to re-build a data intensive system (photos, music, geophysical) from the cloud. I’m back-up paranoid anyway, so I also have a local back-up. But if the house burns down…