Accountants and accounting firms are embracing the idea of cloud computing with good reason. In addition to greater ease of access from more locations for more users and the outsourcing of a great deal of IT support, the use of cloud computing may help turn a great deal of accountants into "specialists" in their clients' fields.
Years of experience in a field may be replaced by the information in a cloud operated database of businesses in that field. An accountant can get a real foothold into understanding and giving informed advice by comparing the his employer's statistics to those of a set of other businesses in the same industry. This certainly won't replace name recognition and customer loyalty, but a new business taking advantage of a savvy CPA's skills will essentially be able to use the honed instincts of an older business and maybe even gain new market insight their competitors don't have.
Of course, an accountant who decides to use cloud computing may find himself pulled to actually specialize in an industry. Rather than having to use a variety of software-as-a-service applications tailored for each of his clients (say one is a restaurant, another an optometrist, and another an electronics store), it's obviously more economical to subscribe to one app and look for clients in the one industry for which the app is designed.
As the server in the closet is replaced by the cloud server, the local business CPA may be replaced by a globalized, small to medium business CPA. If an Austin accountant works for a few optometrists already and is geared up for more, there's no reason he shouldn't take on another optometrist in Seattle. Any file at all can be accessed and modified by multiple users in different locations. There's no redundancy, no confusion about which is the latest version of the budget. Pretty soon it may be a requirement for any accountant who wants to keep his feet on the ground to get his head in the cloud.
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