Why Cloud Computing?
Why Cloud Computing is Even Better for
Small Businesses
Cloud Computing has been one of the hottest buzzwords over the last
few years but surprisingly we have been using it for more than 10 years and
whether you realize it or not, you are using it as well. Gmail, Facebook,
Dropbox, Skype, PayPal, and Salesforce.com are all examples of cloud solutions.
We just don’t think about them in these terms.
The main idea behind the cloud is that you can access all your
information over the internet without having any detailed knowledge of the
infrastructure used to enable it. Do you need to know about it? We don’t think
so. Just like you don’t really need to know what the phone company or electric
company does on their end to enable calls and allow the lights to go on when
you flip the switch; and, you really don’t want to know as long as when you
plug into it, it works.
How can the cloud transform your organization?
- Flexibility – Scale up and down to meet your
organization’s requirements. In today’s economy, this flexibility is key.
You can adjust your IT expenditures to meet your organization’s immediate
needs. You no longer have to build for the future, or be constrained by
decisions made or contracts signed in the past.
- Security – Rest assured that your data in the cloud is
much more secure than what lives on a tower under your desk or in your
small unsecured server room.
- Capacity – In the past, you had to spend a lot of
your IT budget on human resources to manage your software. With cloud
computing, that’s no longer an issue. Now, you can focus on how the
solution will help you further your mission. The IT piece belongs to
somebody else.
- Cost – Using cloud technology reduces your
maintenance fees. No more servers, software, and update fees. Many of the
hidden costs typically associated with software implementation, customization,
hardware, maintenance, and training are rolled into a transparent
subscription fee.
- It’s open – Internet standards and web services allow
you to connect services to each other. This means that you can centralize
your information and access it from anywhere in the world, on any computer
or mobile device, at any time. Sure, cloud computing offers benefits to
companies of all sizes. But the clouds' advantages apply even more
dramatically the smaller and newer your company. At the same time, the
standard objections to cloud computing matter less to small companies than
to large ones. On the plus side, the cloud's economies of scale naturally
make a bigger…
On the plus side,
the cloud's economies of scale naturally make a bigger difference when your
company is too small to generate similar savings and capabilities on its own.
And on the flip side, many of the issues blamed on the cloud in large
enterprises - security, integration, compliance and so on - often cause fewer
problems in small companies that can't properly deal with them anyway.
1. Economies of scale: This one's obvious. The larger the company, the easier it can
generate economies of scale on its own. Small companies, by definition, have
more limited resources. Anything that can give them access to scale in
purchasing and pricing is a big win!
2. Enterprise-class functionality. Big companies have the heft to create the custom functionality they
need. Small companies simply don't have the resources to do that. In the cloud,
though, they can leverage development, maintenance and upgrades across many,
many small businesses... And, increasingly, consumers as well.
3. Money Matters. Startups and small companies are often undercapitalized and
pay-as-you-go cloud computing solutions typically don't require lots of upfront
cash. Even if they don't end up saving much as the monthly fees add up over the
long run, avoiding capital expenditures can be a make-or-break issue for
cash-strapped small businesses.
4. Infrastructure vs. Applications. For the enterprise, cloud computing often means complex
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) projects that have to be installed and
integrated into a company's existing systems. For smaller companies, cloud
computing often means complete cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS)
applications and application suites. No IT required.
5. The Legacy Issue. A common enterprise objection to cloud computing is how will it
work with the company's legacy applications. Small businesses - and especially
new businesses - typically have fewer and less complex legacy apps. Taken a
step farther, that means startups and small businesses have less installed
infrastructure they'd need to throw out to move into the cloud. As for new
businesses, why would you actually buy anything you could "rent" instead?
6. Security Problems. I'm not saying security isn't important to small businesses (though
many don't take it as seriously as they should). I'm saying that while security
in the cloud may still be shaky by enterprise standards, it's almost always far
better than what small businesses are able to provide for themselves.
7. Compliance. Because you don't necessarily know where your data is stored in the
cloud, IaaS can cause confusion as to whether it complies with local, national
and international regulations. That's a huge issue for multinational
corporations, less so for most small businesses.
8. Reliability. The cloud is more reliable than most people think. When widely used
cloud services and applications have outages, it makes national news. When an
individual company - large or small - has a similar problem, they work hard to
make sure you never even hear about it. The bottom line, though, is that even
accounting for network connectivity hiccups, the cloud is probably a lot more
reliable than what small businesses can afford to provide for themselves.
When it comes right down to it, cloud computing seems made for
startups and small businesses. It's the best way to get enterprise class - or
better yet, consumer class - functionality without having to develop it
yourself or lay out a big chunk of cash to buy it. And even though cloud computing
still isn't fully mature, its remaining issues simply carry less weight when
viewed from the perspective of a startup or small business.
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