Welcome to the World Wide Computer.

By working through the "cloud," companies can save thousands of dollars in costs by making their IT departments redundant, scaling down energy costs by cutting back on hardware purchases and "renting" software on a monthly basis without the need to upgrade of acquire additional licences. Already, a bevy of applications including accounting suites, sales and inventory management programs, word processors as well as customized enterprise-class software packages are available for business owners.

Voices.com, a voice-over management company, utilizes Salesforce.com's content management software (kind of a Microsoft Outlook on steroids) and has quickly become the backbone of its business, says chief executive David Ciccarelli.

"We're a small team with less than a dozen employees. Our business generates revenues on a subscription basis and in order to forecost our earnings, we get reports in real-time which is extremely powerful," he said.

Before deciding to use Salesforce's software, Mr. Ciccarelli says Voices.com was looking at a piece of software that would have cost about $1-million to implement. "Not only was that out of the question, but we would have to hire an IT team to be around all the time to troubleshoot problems and deal with upgrades," he said.

"With Salesforce, it's in the realm of $10,000 a year, including any customization. It's really mind-blowing."

David George-Cosh
Technology Writer
Financial Post