Well, a week is a long time in football...! Last week England were rubbish, this week they are through to the next stage. Last week we feared Italy, this week they've flown home. Have you noticed how things change rapidly? It's the same online - last week the non-stop interest in internet sex was something that was never talked about, this week it gets an official "top level domain" (.xxx). Last week, we were all due to pay a "broadband tax", this week it has been scrapped. Nothing stands still; we live in a world of ever increasing change and that means your business needs to be able to respond quickly. Agile thinking and fast responses are needed now more than ever - are you ready for that?

The Cloud is the name given to a collection of computers and storage devices that are shared amongst many organisations. Essentially, it is a massive data centre spanning the planet.

At the moment, most small businesses have their data stored locally, on their own computers and servers. Large companies use "data warehouses" or have their own dedicated servers. But that presents dangers in both cases. For the small business there is the possibility of damage, wiping out the entire business data. For big business that's also a potential problem, but mainly there is a security risk of so much data collected in one place.

With "The Cloud" your data is stored in a distributed system, with multiple automated backups and with higher security levels than most companies already run. On top of that, no-one knows where the date actually is - hence breaking into the "premises" is next to impossible. Many people appear to worry about "the cloud" yet it presents one of the most secure options available for storing your data. And the most resilient.

On top of this, with an increasingly mobile method of working, the cloud means you can have access to your data wherever you are in the world. All you need is a computer or a mobile phone and an internet connection. People laughed when the iPad was first launched without any kind of hard disk...how would you access your data, people complained. But the iPad is a step ahead of most manufacturers, who are putting ever larger, fragile, steal-able and fallible hard drives into their machines. With the iPad you can access an almost infinite amount of data that even the biggest PCs cannot store - yet the iPad is puny in comparison.

We are moving away from having data on our premises to having data wherever we are at that moment in time. That's what "the cloud" is all about and it represents a shift in working patterns and possibilities that we haven't yet scratched the surface of. But if you run your own business, getting involved with services like LiveDrive (http://livedrive.com) means that you free yourself from being connected to your computer by that invisible umbilical cord. The Cloud means freedom and increased security, so it is well worth considering.

Remember, you can always ask your question and get it answered in this newsletter by going to: http://www.grahamjones.co.uk/questions

Earlier this week I spent a day at a meeting for "Fellows" of the Professional Speaking Association. I have been a Fellow (FPSA) for the past five years and I get together with the other 35 such people in the UK to discuss the professional speaking business and how we can improve what we deliver on stage and how we can boost our businesses. Every time I attend these sessions I learn something new. I am also always reminded of things that I should be doing as a professional speaker that I am not doing, or which I have been promising myself for ages....! At our meeting this week, one of the other Fellows was asked what "one thing" he would take away from the event; unfortunately he could not give one thing. Instead, he had a list of 21 action items he would be doing as a result of learning new things. And he was an experienced speaker of many years standing on "the circuit". It just shows that if you gather together with like-minded individuals, who are all keen to improve their business, you can always learn.

So, how often do you get together with your peers to discuss ways you can improve your business?

Every time you click on a link or type a web address into your browser your internet service provider's computers have to work out exactly what you want. The reason is that none of the addresses on the web are stored as those domain names. For instance "google.com" is actually "209.85.225.103". When you type in "google.com" your internet service provider has to look it up, find the translation and then divert your request to those numbers. This is called the "DNS" system and without it the web would not work. The problem is, your ISP cannot store all the numbers, so it looks them up on other servers - adding to delays. But if you use a centralised DNS system, instead of your ISP, your web browsing speed will increase marginally for each page (adding up to several minutes over a week or so). The best system is OpenDNS (http://www.opendns.com). This allows you to use their DNS servers which will boost your internet connections - and will also help you filter out unwanted websites (something that is much harder for your ISP to do). OpenDNS is free, but if you want extra facilities it is a mere $9.95 a year. If you have a family, it is also by far the best way of stopping your children from accessing dubious websites.

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