In the effort to survive and thrive in today’s highly competitive business environment, accounting firms have looked to the integration of applications to provide the greater efficiencies their clients demand. These efficiencies include a reduction in IT costs, automatic backup, and the ability to respond rapidly to changes in laws and regulations as key indicators of future success.

These firms are using the efficiencies inherent in cloud computing to drive success and service.

Drake Software has been offering various cloud-based solutions for tax preparation for some time now. Most recently, in September of 2013, the company announced Drake Hosted -- a full suite of integrated, cloud-based accounting applications that access the full array of Drake Software products, including the Professional Tax Solution, Client Write-Up, Payroll and Document Manager.

The site also hosts mission-critical productivity software from Microsoft (additional fees apply), Including MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint and MS Publisher. Other productivity tools are planned for future updates.

In its first year alone, Drake Hosted has proven successful with our customers for its security, flexibility, reliability and performance. Equally important has been the exceptional level of support for Drake Hosted, including expert network engineers to manager theHosted infrastructure, first-class phone and email technical support, and a web dashboard for account management. Each customer’s cloud storage space can be easily expanded to support the data storage needs of the customer, with support for dual monitors and seamless integration with local peripherals such as printers and scanners.

In crafting a real-time, tightly-integrated cloud solution, performance was a critical consideration for our engineering team. Drake Hosted utilizes a robust Citrix XenApp platform for true hybrid cloud functionality, and is based on the latest Intel Xeon processor architecture for maximum performance. The data center and network are fully redundant, with UPS and generator-based backup power and RAID technology for fault tolerance.

Drake Software expects to see even greater numbers of its customers move to Drake Hosted during this year to enhance their opportunities for efficiency and more robust client service. To streamline that process, the company offers a short video outlining the benefits of the cloud-based solution, as well as a special page of information on pricing, resources available, sales support, requirements and user agreement, as well as sign-up procedures at

http://www.drakesoftware.com/site/products/DrakeHostedPricing.aspx.