If you've been reading our blog, you'll know that we are huge advocates of retail hopping on the technology bandwagon, specifically in web based applications.  It doesn't make any sense NOT to.  There was a great article in last week's Womens Wear Daily titled, "Retail's Technological Revolution Takes Off" which clearly defines what cloud computing is, and what the benefits are.

Here are a few noteworthy quotes on the "cloud" -

"Retailers — and, not incidentally, apparel makers and consumers — will get any kind of computing power they need from the “cloud” — which provides an application or service available to anyone at any time as long as they have an Internet connection. Everything will be knitted together by social media and accessible from any mobile device anywhere. Call it the third-wave Web."

"A wide variety of cloud services are already available today, including personal productivity software, enterprise applications and niche software aimed at the apparel industry. The application or service is hosted and available on demand through a Web browser at any time, as long as the user has an Internet connection, and the user’s data is stored remotely by the host. Examples are any Internet-based mail service such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail, and Google Docs, which offers free spreadsheets, presentations, word processing and other office tools that can be accessed from anywhere on the fly and shared with anyone simply by typing in the person’s e-mail address. Social software such as YouTube, Twitter and Flickr are other examples."

And, our favorite quote:

"In the apparel world, it’s a cliché that multibillion-dollar businesses run on spreadsheets, and need to upgrade to enterprise software that anyone in the company can view. This is true, but now cloud software as simple as Google Docs or as enterprise-oriented as NetSuite can at least partially solve the problem more quickly and less expensively."

By golly, I think the apparel industry is starting to get it!  (Step 1 of 12)

Now, we just have to get the older generation of buyers and executives to start listening to the recent grads and assistants working in their companies.  (Step 2 of 12)