Okay, so if you sat through my, what's cloud computing one on one? Let's take a few minutes and talk about why cloud computing literally, what are the advantages? Why would you make a business shift to cloud based systems to software as a service and other kinds of services that are out there somewhere else? Let me talk, why not? First, right. One of the biggest objections that I hear from people when I talk about cloud computing is they say, Well, I don't want my data.

I don't want my stuff. I don't want my information sitting on someone else's system out there on the net, somewhere else out of my control. Let me counter that with two fairly simple observation. The computer man right now the computer this little green guys at the computer you're viewing this on are also on the net right now. And if you think that your computer is somehow safer, more secured, more locked down, then data center system that's running a software As a service application or pieces of software as a service application, I'm sorry, it's not. I'm not saying that those systems are inherently more secure.

But they're far more likely to have someone whose job it is to keep them secure to back them up to keep your data secure, to back it up to try and protect it from hackers, thieves and spies and so on. Yes, many of those in one place makes a bigger target. So the likelihood of a breach goes up. You got to balance that off with no one's running nodes running email apps on the or web browser on the machines running a big Software as a Service app so that the my data isn't safe. I think you kind of have to flush that can flush that. Come on that false false swinging out of there.

The reason I think that cloud computing is such a powerful thing is it kind of shifts the focus of information technology of it, which has been the initial for a long time. And it splits us things apart. And it says, You know what? It's about the information separately from the technology, your data, your information might end up all over the place. The technology with which you access it is actually going to end up all over the place as well as the days of being able to centralize all of your business information calculation and function on one personal computer, or on a server with a few computers attached to it. It just doesn't work anymore, right?

How many digital devices do you have running in your life? You probably have a PC, most likely a notebook. You've probably got a smartphone. You might have a tablet, you might have another PC, home PC office PC, you might, you might have kids in the house, in which case the number of digital devices multiply. And you might have a TV that's connected to the net. You might get guest access to a computer of some sort.

The number of digital devices is is really going up and up and up. If you move your information to a system on the cloud, a couple of advantages started start happening, that information can work for you seven by 24. It's not dependent on you keeping your computer up and running or worse, you being physically at that computer. So there's a freedom in space. Literally freedom from location that comes with data on the cloud. I can't count the number of times that I needed access to a bit of information, taking out my phone.

Got what I need to I actually answered a tax question at a stoplight once because I could go right to the cloud system that we use for documents, login, go to the document, hit the password on the document because that was information I sorted protected twice and answer the question from the bookkeeper or whatever it was. So your information up there always on maybe in a number of different systems is one very big thing. It enables you to get to it from multiple devices. It also enables In a really fundamental way, your business data to work with other people or other kinds of business data sort of become part of the world, if you will. So I'll give you I'll give you an example following on my SAS example of what cloud computing, when I send someone an invoice from our cloud based invoicing system, they get a link in an email that says you got an invoice from visually, when they open that link, and go read the invoice.

There's a little record added to my data that says so and so looked at this invoice at this date in this time from this IP address. I don't have the arguments about well, we never got your invoice, because I'm able to say I'm actually yeah, this person looked at it and read it in this day. And that's only possible because the invoices are sitting there and because that company keeps adding the functions and connections to make all of that work. I don't want to make all that work on my own office infrastructure. And actually Don't need that don't need to be the only person in the world who can send invoices or acknowledge reading of invoices that way, it's great if everybody does it. So the company that writes the invoicing system can focus on being the best in the world at that, and I can take advantage of it.

And they can even structure the subscription to it. So it makes business sense for a company my size, or bigger subscription for a bigger company that does a lot more invoices. So Cloud computing has a huge number of advantages. You're not in you're not in the same kind of control. Yes, your data is somewhere else. I'll address some of the ways to to deal with those concerns.

In the course, you're not necessarily as integrated. These are somewhat early days for cloud computing. I think it's quite possible to end up with a system for this and a system for that and a system for the other. And yes, you really like your business data is sort of scattered in different buckets. From what I've seen of underground, old fashioned it with peace. Using servers, that tended to happen, just as much in the office as it's happening in the cloud.

Another thing that I address in this course is some ways to start planning and choosing systems. So that that integration between cloud systems, disparate cloud systems is possible. And it really starts to generate some additional advantages. So why the cloud? I gotta say, Why do you get your electricity from the grid? And why don't you have a generator in the house?

That's kind of what it comes down to. I hope that's helpful. I'm going to get very technical at the beginning of the course. It's not for the sake of tech. It's for the sake of talking about business control, and things that you should have a handle on, so that you can keep running your own cloud based systems without ending up with a big IT staff. So I hope you enjoy