OK, here goes with some more cloud-based Apps which we use every day at SilverTin (www.silvertin.com) for email, conference calls, shared workspace.   They never let us down.  What's more they are completely free or available for a very small fee. 

Email is the engine which drives the majority of your business communications.  It needs to be secure, reliable and ‘get-attable’ when you are away from your desk.  For this we use Gmail which is part of Google Apps www.google.com/a.  There is a free version of Google Apps which will give you up to 10 user Accounts.  Once your business starts growing you could take out the paid version which currently costs around £3 per user per month. 

With Google Apps you can use a proper @yourbusiness.com email address which looks very professional.  The real big benefit of using Gmail is that you can pick up your email on your Smartphone.  Gmail is a doddle to set up on Smartphones and means that you have access to your email when you are away from your PC. 

So, you are well on with setting up your business but the phone bill is building up and you are spending a lot of time in meetings with suppliers trying to finalise specifications, build your product, reviewing documentation etc..  A great alternative to travelling and expensive phone calls is skype www.skype.com.  Skype is free to sign up and offers you free Skype to Skype calls across the internet.  Just register a user account, make sure the person you wish to contact has a Skype account and give them a call.  Most modern laptops have inbuilt microphones so you don’t have to sit all wired up like David Coleman.  In our experience the call quality is always very good.  You can make Group conference calls with other Skype users which works well.  A great feature on Skype allows you to share your desktop with other users on the call - perfect for playing back ideas or running through a presentation.  Skype works well on a normal residential broadband connection.  It is possible to make Video Calls too (again free) but it can result in degradation of the audio (where you sound like whales chatting).  Give it a try – there is nothing to lose.  Microsoft have just bought Skype so it will be interesting to see if they continue to offer such a great free service.

Next on the list is Dropbox.  www.dropbox.com.  We love Dropbox.  It is like having your own 2Gb network drive in the cloud.  We use it an awful lot.  It takes seconds to set up and it appears on your desktop just like any other folder on your computer.  If you have a multi-site business, Dropbox is a brilliant shared workspace.  Great also for setting up Issue Logs with your suppliers since you can both access the same document rather than play email tennis.  Marvellous!

The beauty of the above Apps is that they can be up and running in minutes.  Since they are cloud-based there is no hassle of buying hardware, setting up servers, comms etc.  They just work – brilliantly!  It is like ‘software to go’, all the benefits without the hassle.