When cloud computing first hit the scene, it was hard to see the benefit. After all, don't you have more control over your IT solutions if they're installed right on your own computers? While the answer to this is indeed "yes," it turns out that there are so many benefits to having things on remote servers – "in the cloud" – that most now prefer the cloud option.

One of the biggest benefits is that cloud-based software typically provides an automatic data backup of everything you do with it. Sometimes, this is a function that doesn't even require set-up. Usually, you just need to indicate the location where saves should be stored, and if needed, enter your password.

Having an automatic data backup protects you from lost work or other data that would happen if your only copy was on your local computer. Power outages, computer freezes or crashes, and even hitting the wrong key can instantly wipe out hours' worth of work. With cloud computing, you never have to worry about these things. You can rest assured that a copy of your current work, often up to a point within the last minute or so, is at the cloud company's data center waiting for you.

Cloud computing also makes it easy to make all of your work portable. You can do the bulk of your work on one computer, and then log in from a different device to pick the project back up and complete it. This is important if, for some reason, you have to leave your office and then finish a project at home or in a hotel room. It is also one of the keys to being able to work at home when you would normally do it at an office. Those at the office can just download your work from the data center.

Data portability is also great simply for convenience's sake. For example, it used to be that you would have to manually transfer all of your passwords from your PC to your phone. Now, cloud computing makes it so that you can simply log into your browser account from any device, and in almost an instant, your stored passwords will be synched. If you're a heavy computer user with 200-300 passwords in your list, you'll want to buy whoever invented that mug of the finest ale.

As you can see, it is well worth it to move most, if not all, of your frequently-used software solutions to cloud-based equivalents. There may be some legacy software that doesn't have an equivalent, but if there is one, go for it.