QuickBooks in the Clouds

Everyone has heard of Cloud Computing and terms as Hosted, SaaS and PaaS. However what do they mean in reference to QuickBooks.

First Cloud Computer is just that the computers are on some system in other words available via Internet Access. Just like a web based application in many cases. If a company sells their application program as a service via access of the Internet it is Software as a Service. SaaS can be extended to include portions of the operating system or Platform and is known as Platform as a Service. A Hosted environment is where the operating system is provided for you with certain software products. This is called a Platform. So this would be PaaS. Citrix and VMWare are becoming popular Hosting offering companies that provide software for hosting companies to provide a hosted solution. There are now many companies offering PaaS.

There are pros and cons for these techniques such a PaaS has scalability where you can ‘turn up’ the processing power and include more CPUs, more RAM, more Hard Drive as a setting on your system. If you had to do this on your own in-house system it might mean new hardware, down time, etc. Cloud Computing does simplify this and as a rule can be done with a screen setting with no down time. There are books written on this and this is not the topic of this article however Cloud Computing as it relates to QuickBooks is.

For QuickBooks US there are 2 basic platforms. Desktop and QuickBooks Online called QBO or QBOE. their QuickBooks Online is as a matter of fact a ‘hosted’ an AU version QuickBooks Enterprise on a Windows Desktop system. Many host companies do something similar)

The Clouds as a SaaS application

QBO is in the Clouds as a SaaS application. QBO looks a bit like QBD nevertheless it is a totally separate program and there are obvious differences not only in appearance yet also in functionality. QBD for MACs is as well different than QBD for Windows. We will not be going over these differences. Intuit’s new offering Intuit Anywhere will increase the entire ‘Cloud’ experience and make QuickBooks available to most internet connected devices.

4. You access the app via the internet so even though it is available to you wherever you have Internet access if there is no internet service or the service is slow at that time the app may not be useable.

So what about 3rd party applications will they work with your QuickBooks? Some will, some won’t. As research changes the apps you use must keep up. We will be updating our products to be in the clouds soon. The first will be our IIFImporter to import your legacy IIF files. A cloud version will be available in the near future and support QBO and QBD at the time our TransImporter for Excel types of files. Our Integrator for eCommerce web sites, which currently supports about 50 different eCommerce systems and shopping carts will be later. However all do currently support a hosted Windows solution.