Home topics small-business-resources retail Cloud Retail Tech Cloud Retail and the cloud – a match made in heaven? Ray McQuillan June 28, 2012 Cloud-based solutions are being used by a growing number of retailers to support important business functions – including the mission-critical point of sale. While some concerns remain about data security and application uptime, there’s significant movement within the retail industry toward cloud-based, on-demand solutions, and it’s easy to see why. Unlike many other technologies that retailers have had to adapt to meet their business needs, it’s as if cloud computing was designed specifically with the cost-conscious, data-deluged retail enterprise in mind. Retailers can achieve savings from lower initial capital expenditures, and the usage-based pricing model used by most cloud-based applications aligns well with the spiky, seasonal nature of the retail business. Cloud-based technologies also provide the flexibility to scale up quickly, supporting IT deployments for everything from pop-up stores to more permanent expansions, and to scale down just as quickly when business conditions change and a new approach is needed. Retail business owners are always looking for projects that essentially fund themselves – providing them with hard benefits up front but then allowing the retailer to do things differently than before. The cloud is the typical example of a technology that pays for itself up front and then creates long-term strategic flexibility. For example, if a retailer starts putting all their store-based technology and traditional customer-facing touchpoints onto the cloud, why wouldn’t the retailer co-locate their systems