Much in the way the postal service assigns every home an address to receive mail, networking assigns an address to each device on a network. In order to share information across the network, each device must be connected to a common workgroup, domain, or since Windows 7, a homegroup. In this way information can be selected on the various computers with an option to share or not with the other group or domain members.
With the inception of “the Cloud”, data can now be shared between devices with a user name or email address and a password. This has added a whole new dimension to sharing data and making it available to both computers and handheld device. When systems are set up properly, your data is accessible when you need it, no matter where you are located.
I love to show business owners how utilizing networking and the cloud can make their offices more efficient and add to their bottom line by enabling them to share data between devices. Many new software applications installed on a network can communicate with one another. A great example of this would be the use of automated billing software or a credit card swipe that will automatically place information directly into QuickBooks. It is easy to see how this would save money by eliminating countless hours of data entry time every year.