Compare Different Productivity Software in the Cloud

Compare Different Productivity Software in the Cloud

Today, there are many, many types of productivity software in the cloud and the IT (information technology) community has differing opinions on what they consider to be important criteria when choosing a cloud service. In short, five criteria that are generally rated are the products cost, support and availability, multiple options (flexibility), backups and storage, and security. Companies are manufactured in all sorts of sizes and each one runs differently than the next. The needs of businesses have striking contrasts and they all will put a different value on each of the criteria. It can prove difficult to get unbiased opinions on what providers are the best and it will take quite a bit of research to know what works best for you and your business.

Office 365 is a monthly or annual subscription plan that allows you to have access to Office applications and additionally gives the user the power to utilize other productivity services via the cloud. Cost and storage is dependent upon what the customer wishes for and the software makes it fairly easy to upgrade or downgrade as seen fit. A single terabyte of storage is included despite what subscription is chosen.

A fantastic feature of Office 365 is that it and saved work are accessible anywhere in the world providing that you have an internet connection. Many employees are expected to be diligent with their work and if the internet is not available then Office 365 can still be accessed with just phone coverage and many apps are available ("Office 365 For Business Faq", 2016). Another great function of this cloud software is that employees or a team can review and edit a current document at the same time. This can be done in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel (“Don't Know About,” 2014). As with any service, security and protection always a concern for companies regardless of the organizations size or structure. A few features that Office 365 offers for protection are data encryptions (data transmitted or rested), nothing is accessible for the purpose of advertising, and very difficult passwords must be used by users (Benjamin, 2016). For individuals who are accustomed to Microsoft, the transition to Office 365 is fairly painless. The software offers a variety of add on programs that should fit the simplicity of a company.

Another productive software in the cloud software is iWork. This can be a great software program that businesses and their employees can benefit from and the three applications that make it up are Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Pages includes the word processing functions that most individuals are familiar with, but with that the software allows the user generate many different types of documents. These documents include newsletters, invitations, and resumes. Numbers portion of iWork is basically a spreadsheet that is comparable to Microsoft’s