Those are more simplistic examples, but do illustrate the concept of working in a web-based world whether accessing your holiday photos or running a sophisticated piece of software for your business.

Cloud computing has even gotten the attention of the U.S. government. According to a March 7 article in The Washington Post, the TechAmerica Foundation is leading the effort to create a commission that will “make recommendations to the federal chief information officer and the commerce secretary.”

The Obama administration is pushing government agencies to use cloud computing whenever it can as a way to reduce costs and increase efficiencies. According to the article, “The commission is expected to address the way the government should deploy cloud technologies and consider policies that could advance the cloud-first initiative.”

What are your thoughts on cloud computing? Are you using it in your business to save money? Do you have any concerns?

Cloud computing also can be as simple as Google docs or a Web-based project management system. More and more people are working in the cloud, which can be a real benefit to our mobile society and the fact we want to access our e-mail, files or software tools from a variety of devices – laptops, desktops and smartphones.

Individuals and even small or mid-sized businesses can pretty easily work in the cloud. And it can cut costs because these Web-based services can often be free or less expensive than buying software to install on the company server.

A concern of cloud computing, though, is the security. If you’re sharing company information over the Internet, is it more vulnerable? An article last week on ComputerWeekly.com suggests some barriers – including security – to cloud computing for businesses are beginning to diminish.

The article goes on to point out that flexibility is one barrier that hasn’t budged. One way cloud computing can work well for businesses is by allowing them to pay for services as they use them – that way when times are good, businesses pay more and when business is slow, they pay less. But, so far that’s not the model.

What are other barriers to cloud computing? Are you using “the cloud” in your company and is it working well for you?