10 Cloud Apps, Storage Services to Help Enterprises Cut IT Overhead

By Don Reisinger

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said that the cloud is integral to his company’s future, and Office 365 is a key component in that strategy. Office 365 is available for individuals, small businesses and large enterprises. It provides cloud versions of all of the company’s productivity applications, including Outlook, Office and its cloud storage service OneDrive. Office 365 even includes support for Skype and Microsoft’s business social network, Yammer.

Google is actively targeting Microsoft in the enterprise, and chief among the company’s solutions is Google Apps for Work. Like Office 365, Google Apps has an office productivity suite, Gmail and cloud storage through Google Drive. Google says that more than 5 million businesses are on its service right now and that, that figure is growing each quarter.

Zoho arguably has the broadest suite of services of any cloud provider in this roundup. The company, which started as a Web-based productivity solution, has expanded to include CRM and sales tracking, a help desk for the IT department and finance applications, including invoices and expenses. Zoho even has human resources apps. It’s surprising just how much Zoho packs into its cloud services.

Box is one of the more popular enterprise storage solutions, due in large part to the company’s focus on businesses. Many of its competitors have consumer-focused services with enterprise add-ons. Box, however, focused on the corporate world first with a cloud-based storage service that uses high-grade encryption, enables collaboration between employees and provides secure access on mobile devices. It comes with 10GB of free storage.

Any discussion on cloud computing must include Salesforce.com, the Web-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform that has become a standard sales management tool in businesses large and small. The platform allows salespeople to manage their contacts, track leads and the progress of sales in the pipeline, and a lot more. Any business looking for a sales or CRM system in the cloud should at least consider Salesforce.

Parallels is perhaps best known for its Windows virtualization services on Macs. But the company also has a subsidiary, called Odin, that provides a range of tools for the enterprise. Odin provides Plesk for Web servers and includes a server virtualization service for companies operating in the cloud. Odin also offers business automation services. Think of Odin as the backbone for any cloud deployment. Image 6: Please use this image:

NetSuite is another cloud-focused company that provides a range of online application services. NetSuite started out focusing on enterprise resource planning applications and branched out from there, adding professional services automation. The service also has e-commerce features for companies looking to sell products online.

Citrix has steadily expanded its portfolio of cloud services. The company offers desktop-as-a-service, cloud storage with Sharefile, mobile device management, application delivery services and more. Citrix has established itself as a leader in the marketplace by offering one important cloud service after another, and that has allowed its services to win favor in enterprises.

Amazon Web Services can offer just about any enterprise in the world all the cloud computing capacity it could possibly need in terms of servers, storage and networking to allow enterprises to offload applications to the Web. Plus, it offers content delivery, data analytics and database management services to boot.

OpenDNS provides a cloud-based network security service for companies. The company delivers security enforcement services and Web filtering, and works with several managed services products. OpenDNS essentially takes the firewalls and security features previously maintained on internal corporate servers and moves them to the cloud. The company says it services 50 million daily active users.