My wife's small office is all on PCs and the boss wants to move everything to the cloud......how should they start doing this and what service should they use? Would love some opinions from you gee........errr...... Experts. Sent from my baller ass iPhone 5 FAMS!
Have them go to Google Apps and leave Microsoft Office behind. It is almost as simple as that. Google Drive can handle their file storage and they can still think they are keeping it local but it will also be on the cloud. Custom Gmail for corporate email which has great calendar sharing and contacts management (can sync to your phones as well which is a big plus).
For my business we use old versions of Office from back before they limited the number of installs. Office 2000 still beats the pants off Google Docs, and I use both. I also have Office 2013 and do a lot of work on spreadsheets, powerpoints and access databases, and frankly I still prefer Office 2000. For cloud storage, there's nothing easier than a Dropbox account. I love its ability to synch folders across computers, and that it creates online backups automatically.
I've worked with both Paragon and Ergos, and would recommend either. Paragon rates a little higher in my book, but both are very good... http://www.paragonsupport.com/ http://www.ergos.com/
It all depends on how much storage you need and if an operation wants to move their number crunching and application hosting into the cloud as well. Google, Amazon, etc. all offer a wide range of cloud based computing services that can be scaled to a user's need. http://aws.amazon.com/ https://cloud.google.com/
For small office, google docs and google mail. You can set up hcp@yourcompany.com type email addresses using google small business email. The only drag about moving your business application use to cloud-based applications is that you'll need enough bandwidth to keep everyone happy.
The IRS, NSA...will all have direct access to every bit you download but that shouldn't bother you unless you're lying on your taxes or posting political comments...
