Many restaurant groups are looking for easier ways to streamline systems and facilitate corporate communications and data sharing. In light of this, more restaurant operators are paying close attention to cloud technology.

Using the previous advances communications, cloud-based POS systems can be independent from platform and operating system limitations. Cloud-based POS systems are created to be compatible with a wide range of POS hardware.

In fact, the cloud allows users to store data on remote computer servers and retrieve that data almost as fast as if it resided on their server at home or office. Cloud-based services also allow users to access software without installing it on their computers.

A 2013 survey of new technologies from Hospitality Technology Magazine found that more restaurant operators are interested in online ordering and using mobile phones for ordering, but the largest increase was interest in cloud computing. Cloud was the biggest jump, and is now desired by 36.2% in their survey (a jump of 17 percentage points over 2012).

Behind all of the technological jargon surrounding cloud technology is a paradigm shift in how people and businesses use computers. The advantages of a cloud-based POS are:

• instant centralization of data,
• ability to access data from anywhere there is
• internet connection
• lower costs

Cloud-based POS also helped expand POS systems to mobile devices.

Cloud-based POS systems are different from traditional POS largely because user data, including sales and inventory need not be stored locally, but in a remote server. The POS system is also not run locally, so there is no installation required. In fact, the advent of cloud computing gives birth to the possibility of POS systems to be deployed as software as a service, which can be accessed directly from the Internet, using any internet browser.