Cloud com­put­ing is one of those terms you hear a lot about. Microsoft recent­ly launched a “To the cloud” adver­tis­ing cam­paign. Google offers Google Docs, a suite of cloud-based office soft­ware. I’m work­ing on con­tract for a com­pa­ny that makes gov­ern­ment soft­ware that runs on Sales­force, anoth­er cloud-based com­pa­ny. So it’s notable that there’s lit­tle dis­cus­sion about cloud-based author­ing soft­ware for tech­ni­cal writers.

Cloud com­put­ing basi­cal­ly means soft­ware than runs on the Inter­net ver­sus soft­ware installed on your com­put­er. Adobe FrameMak­er uses the tra­di­tion­al mod­el: you down­load it from Adobe’s site or insert a DVD into your com­put­er and the soft­ware is installed on your hard dri­ve. In con­trast, Google Docs is acces­si­ble via your web brows­er instead of installing it. Once you log on, it’s instan­ta­neous. No more wait­ing for the instal­la­tion. No more punch­ing in long, com­pli­cat­ed ser­i­al numbers.

Soft­ware like Google Docs is catch­ing on. While it’s cur­rent­ly viewed as a “lite” ver­sion of Microsoft Office, it’s improv­ing all the time. Google is also look­ing at cre­at­ing an offline mod­el in case you’re work­ing at a loca­tion that does not have Inter­net access.

For tech­ni­cal writ­ers, there’s not a lot of dis­cus­sion about writ­ing using cloud-based author­ing tools. Think about the benefits:

• Your soft­ware would be avail­able imme­di­ate­ly. No more waits for a large and some­times slow down­load from a vendor’s web site. I recent­ly down­loaded Adobe’s Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Suite and the process took more than two hours.
• Your upfront costs are low­er. Cloud-based soft­ware is fre­quent­ly priced on a sub­scrip­tion mod­el. So instead of pay­ing $2,000 for Adobe Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Suite, you would pay a month­ly fee to access Adobe’s soft­ware on the Inter­net. I’d read­i­ly agree to a month­ly fee of say $55 ver­sus $2,000 for a suite of software.
• Your soft­ware sub­scrip­tion would ide­al­ly pro­vide you with the lat­est ver­sion of the soft­ware. Instead of pon­der­ing whether I should upgrade to FrameMak­er 10, which was just released, my sub­scrip­tion would imme­di­ate­ly give me access to the lat­est features.
• Col­lab­o­ra­tion could be eas­i­er among writ­ers. As the soft­ware resides on a remote serv­er, you could prob­a­bly store your source files there too. If done secure­ly, this could make col­lab­o­ra­tion eas­i­er. Imag­ine if you need­ed to share your files with a team in India. No more e‑mailing large files.
• Tech­ni­cal reviews could also be done via the cloud. So instead of crank­ing up Word or Acro­bat on a com­put­er, review­ers could read your mate­r­i­al by review­ing a doc­u­ment that is avail­able on a web site.

Of course the mod­el isn’t per­fect. Per­for­mance, for exam­ple, could be an issue. But if soft­ware ven­dors can ensure a secure envi­ron­ment and offer decent per­for­mance, I think the idea has a lot of merit.