12 Must have cloud applications for small business

One of the greatest benefit of cloud is that today we have more apps and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools for increasing workforce productivity and efficiency than ever before. If there’s a specific function your business has demand for, there’s a very good chance someone already has an app or cloud-based service for that. No business can deny the need of cloud application these days and in the coming days the demand only going to increase. So, here’s my top 12 picks of cloud applications:

Microsoft Office 365

Office 365 is the web application version of Microsoft’s Office suite. It comes in multiple versions for both home and enterprise users. It includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, and sometimes also include Outlook, Publisher, Access, OneDrive, SharePoint, Skype, Exchange, Teams and/or Yammer. In its most recent quarterly report, Microsoft stated that its Office 365 commercial revenue had increased 42 percent. Earlier this year, the company announced that it had 100 million monthly users for Office 365, and that the total would likely be 120 million before the end of 2017.

Jira

JIRA is a tool developed by Australian Software Company Atlassian. It is used for bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management for software development teams. The name “JIRA” is actually inherited from the Japanese word “Gojira” which means “Godzilla”.

The basic use of this tool is to track issue and bugs related to your software and Mobile apps. It is also used for project management. The JIRA dashboard consists of many useful functions and features which make handling of issues easy. Some of the key features are listed below. Let’s learn JIRA Defect and Project tracking software with this Training Course.

Salesforce.com

Salesforce proudly claims to be “the world’s #1 CRM.” Its platform encompasses tools for sales force management, marketing, ecommerce and more, and the company also has a cloud development platform. According to the firm, more than 150,000 companies use its products. In its second fiscal quarter for 2017, it became “the first enterprise cloud software company to break the $10 billion revenue run rate.” And interestingly, it has just entered a partnership that allows it to offer customers free access to the third cloud app in this slideshow.

Google G Suite

G Suite is Google’s cloud-based office productivity suite. The most popular app in the suite is Gmail, its free email service. As of early 2016, Gmail had more than 1 billion monthly active users. The G Suite also includes Google Calendar, Google+, Hangouts, Docs, Sheets, Forms, Slides, Sites, Keep, and Jamboard, as well as Drive cloud storage and tools for managing the cloud apps. Like Office 365, it comes in multiple versions with a variety of price points

Dropbox

According to Dropbox, more than 500 million people and more than 200,000 business use its file sharing services. Many home users are familiar with its free service that includes limited storage, but the company also offers paid plans designed for business users. It has reached two significant financial milestones this year: First, in January, it said that it had achieved an annual run rate of more than $1 billion in revenue, and it claimed to be the first SaaS firm to achieve that mark. Second, in April, it said that it was generating a profit, excluding interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. It is rumored to be considering filing for an initial public offering (IPO) before the end of the year.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Made for designers, artists, filmmakers, and other creative professionals, Adobe Creative Cloud is a suite of apps that can be purchased singly or all together. The best known app in the suite is the PhotoShop image editing programming, and it also includes Illustrator, InDesign, TypeKit, Dreamweaver, XD, Premiere Pro, Audition, After Effects and many other tools. According to the company website, more than 90 percent of the world’s creative professionals use Photoshop, and in its most recent quarterly report, it said that Creative revenue reached $1.06 billion.

GitHub

Among software developers, GitHub has become the place to share and find source code. According to its website, more than 25 million individuals and 117,000 businesses use the service, and it hosts more than 72 million code repositories. To put that in perspective, in 2016 Evans Data Corporation estimated that there would be 25 million developers in the world by 2021. GitHub offers free hosting for open source projects, as well as paid products for businesses that need private repositories. In August of this year, the company said that it had achieved a $200 million annual revenue run rate for its paid services.

WordPress

Beloved by bloggers, WordPress claims that its platform “powers 29 percent of the Internet.” An open source version of its software is available at WordPress.org, and the WordPress.com site hosts the same website management software in the cloud. It offers both free and paid plans. According to the company, more than 409 million people visit websites hosted by WordPress.com each month, and WordPress users publish 41.7 million new posts each month.

Slack

Used by organizations like Airbnb, Capital One, Harvard University, the Los Angeles Times, Oracle and Ticketmaster, Slack is a cloud-based collaboration platform for teams. It claims to be “the fastest-growing business application in history” with 9 million weekly active users. Free and paid subscriptions are available, and it integrates with some of the other cloud apps on this list, like Google Drive, GitHub, Dropbox and Box.

Magento

Magento is a FOS (Free & Open Source) software solution for managing all aspects of virtual shopping carts. It’s currently used in some shape or form by nearly ¼ of a million merchants including big name companies like Nike, Cisco Systems and Ford. Magento was originally developed in 2007 and the platform was purchased in 2011 by eBay/X.commerce. The benefit of being open source is that Magento supports a huge number of features and can be customized to your individual store’s needs. The software supports accepting manual payment solutions such as checks and money orders out of the box. It’s also pre-configured to work with a number of major payment gateways such as PayPal, SagePay and Authorize.net.

Wave

Wave provides a suite of financial services and online software for small businesses. It was founded in 2009. The platforms accounting features are free of charge. It is geared not only towards small business but it also suitable for the freelance sector. Wave has a dedicated setup feature. From here users can decide what applications to access first: general bookkeeping, invoicing or payroll. Although users have to pay to access Wave’s payroll services. Users can utilize the bank reconciliation feature. Businesses can also link their bank accounts, PayPal accounts and other relevant data sources for transaction records.

Box

Like Dropbox, Box offers cloud file-sharing services. However, it was designed primarily for business users and doesn’t market a free service to consumers the way Dropbox does. In its most recent quarterly financial statement, it reported $122.9 million in revenue from 76,000 businesses that use its content management services.

Intuit Software

Intuit doesn’t group its products together into a suite like some of the other cloud app vendors do, but it offers some of the most popular cloud-based financial software for consumers and small businesses. Its best-known products are the QuickBooks accounting software and TurboTax tax preparation software, both of which are available as cloud services. It also offers Mint, a cloud-based personal finance app. In its financial report for its first fiscal quarter of 2018, Intuit reported that QuickBooks Online subscribers climbed 56 percent to 2.55 million.

Bitrix24

It is a collaboration platform which was founded in 2012. It provides a suite of social collaboration, communication and management tools. The solution has a huge variety of functions. It is geared towards any size business. Bitrix 24 centralizes all collaboration and communications from its user dashboard. From here users can organize and track customer interactions, log all store lead data, generate sales reports and perform segmentation of target audiences. Bitrix24 allows users to create personalized invoices for clients. This is done through automatically inserting all client data. Users can create a name for their Britrix24 system upon registering. This will immediately display your ‘Activity Stream’. Users have the option of adding a message at the top of the stream for the rest of the network to view. Files, events and processes can be uploaded to share with your colleagues. Adding new users to Bitrix24 CRM is straightforward and hassle free. Admins can assign departments and groups to each user.