It seems that everyone is starting to talk about “the cloud”.  We’ve been in the cloud since we launched RevolutionEHR in 2007, so, yeah, no big deal…

The cloud is actually nothing new, conceptually.  Back in the dark ages, software applications ran on mainframes in data centers and were accessed remotely from ‘dumb’ terminals (bad rap if you ask us).  Users would enter data and submit reports and other jobs to be processed – and sooner or later they would get their results.  It worked, but it was very inefficient by today’s standards.

Client based operating systems soon followed with snazzy graphical interfaces (i.e. Windows and Mac).  Software vendors started writing their applications to run locally on these client machines to give their users a much better user experience – not only was it faster, but it looked much better.  It was great!  And it was, for awhile…  A better user experience came with a cost.  In order to get new features or fixes for client server applications, users had to become or hire IT professionals.

Most everyone had better things to do though, so thank goodness, over time, two major technological shifts occurred.  The internet became ubiquitous and the internet browser became the interface of choice for most users.  Welcome back to the dark ages of mainframes.  Only today, the mainframe is in the cloud and user interaction with the server via the browser is instantaneous.  It just works better now – way better!

Thanks to the cloud, software users can quit their part time IT jobs and get on with their work and their lives.