BBC Business Editor Tim Weber has revealed his opinion that cloud computing “is going mainstream” and is now being used by companies of all sizes.

In addition, research company TechMarketView is forecasting that the UK will spend over £1 billion on cloud computing by 2012, taking full advantage of its capabilities which allows firms to become truly global, working and communicating as a team regardless of location.

But what is cloud computing and why is its popularity among businesses of all sizes growing so rapidly?  Well, currently, your organisation no doubt runs several networked PCs, hooked up to several servers, all of which capture the data and information processed on a daily basis.  This of course works fine, right up to the point where you run out of space and need to invest in further hardware, or when you need to start including geographically remote members of staff or indeed remote working in your daily practice.

Organisations are becoming global, teams are becoming virtual.  The need to be able to communicate and share information rapidly, cheaply and effectively with people on the other side of the world at any given time has moved from being an unusual occurrence to a regular one.

The “cloud” in question gives you a more flexible infrastructure,  removing the reliance on the capabilities of your existing servers and running applications independent of any of your hardware, allowing you to simply “tap into it” whenever you require.  There is a reduced need for you to have individual pieces of software running on a PC or your network as they can instead be hosted from the cloud.

It doesn’t take a genius to realise that this could, in effect, significantly reduce your IT hardware and maintenance costs.

However, the implications are in fact much further reaching.  Only recently, Rob Lovell, chief executive of ThinkGrid, highlighted how cloud computing means companies are more easily able to maintain productivity throughout disasters or unpredictable events, such as that caused by the continuing volcanic eruption in Iceland.

Somewhat less dramatic but nevertheless debilitating was the flood at a BT exchange in Paddington last month, which saw thousands of businesses instantly becoming incommunicado.  Our client Canburg was one of those affected , but due to its communications infrastructure, with a hosted telephony service and MPLS connection, we managed to keep it high and dry – something which we couldn’t have done, had it simply relied upon a traditional IT infrastructure and network.

It is inevitable surely, that all businesses with a current network will find a need to move to this new flexible hosting in the not too distant future.  After all, the advantages are there for all to see.