Cloud Computing is the latest thing in the computer world, but most people think its a) Extremely Complicated b) Only for Large Businesses and c) Costs a Small Fortune to Implement. Well here is a very practical example of how a small sports club has implemented cloud computing, at no cost to solve some of their administration headaches.

What is Cloud Computing? Here is how Wikipedia defines Cloud Computing, but it’s much easier to explain with a practical example.

Courtown Sailing Club is a small club that is run on a completely voluntary basis.  The club has a very active cruiser racing program and also runs children’s sailing courses for eight weeks during July and August, so it’s computer and administration requirements are not untypical  of most small sports clubs. The biggest problems are that the volunteer committee changes from year to year, so it’s difficult to have consistency with essential club documents relating to policy and procedures, and it’s also difficult to transfer those documents to new committee members.

The second problem relates to the necessity for committee members to share information, particularly relating to the co-ordination and bookings for the summer sailing courses.

The first thing the club did was to set up a Google Documents account and upload the club’s essential documents relating to policies and procedures, the club’s constitution, membership forms, booking forms etc. This means that any new committee member who has access to the Internet and the appropriate access rights, can get access to these documents. It also means that finally the club’s documents have been retrieved form the various members PCs and are now stored centrally.

The second major benefit relates to the co-ordination that is required between the Secretary, Treasurer and Dinghy Course Organiser, to run the summer sailing courses. Because the spreadsheets and databases relating to applications, payments and the allocation of course places are instantly and centrally available to everyone at any time, it has dramatically reduced the confusion and more importantly the phone calls. These people no longer spend their evenings ringing around or more like the driving around trying to sort out Club issues.

The  reason Cloud Computing and Google Docs has been so successful for Courtown Sailing Club is that they, very wisely, kept it as simple as possible. So if you are a small business who needs to deal with flexible work practices and needs to effectively share information then maybe cloud computing is for you.