What are the benefits of Cloud Computing for Small Businesses?You’ve heard the buzz, your IT manager has muttered something about it, or maybe you’re wondering what it’s all about.
We’re talking about Cloud Computing.
More to the point, you might be wondering: “what’s in it for me?”
The
idea behind Cloud Computing is that computer resources – either raw
processing power and storage, or software to help you run your business
– should be a commodity just like electricity, and as with the National
Grid, end-users should have no concern as to how the system works, so
long as they can plug into it.
We’re a long way from that ideal, but there are ways you can use Cloud Computing to save you money, time and worry today.
A
small business with one or two offices has little if any budget for
servers to store their data on. They might store payroll information,
inventories, sales reports, employee records, marketing brochures,
procedural manuals, etc.
Keeping these on individual PCs
is messy and unworkable, but the traditional solution – a central
server – is expensive and complicated to install and maintain.
The
new alternative is to subscribe to a Cloud service: the data is held
online in a central location, and made available through a simple,
friendly interface. The Cloud provider looks after the complicated
stuff for you.
There are many Cloud services to suit a
wide range of needs, from simple document storage to property portfolio
management, human resources, accounting, scheduling, customer
relationship management, and more.
Mobile CAD Surveying Ltd and Clouds UK provide a wide range of products for SMBs.
Economies
of scale mean that a central Cloud Computing provider can invest in
high-quality equipment, which it then rents out to customers for a
fraction of the price that it would cost them to buy and install it
themselves.
This
is the killer feature of Cloud Computing. Your data is available online
through a website, so all you need in order to access it is a computer
(or a BlackBerry, iPhone, or PDA) with an internet connection.
Log
on from a hotel room, an internet café, or from your home computer.
Cloud Computing is ideal for facilitating home working, or even for
companies that want to do away with a central office and work entirely
online. It can also benefit employees on long-term sick leave, who
can’t come into the office but are capable of working from home.
Traditional
computing is insecure – few employees know about security best
practices, and will happily keep data on USB sticks, email, their
laptops, on CD-ROMs in their briefcases, etc.
With Cloud
Computing, your data is held centrally on a secure server guarded by
high-quality firewalls and administered by professionals.
As
an SMB, you probably don’t have the resources to build and maintain
big, complex IT systems. Even running a single, small server can be
time-consuming; could you afford to carry out the following checks
every week?
- Check the disk space
- Investigate any errors in the event logs
- Download the latest patches and test them before installing, in case they interfere with any of your software
- Check
for any intrusion or hacking attempts (this should be a continual
monitoring process, and ideally you would set up an Intrusion Detection
System to alert you – these are extremely complicated, so you’d end up
paying an expert to configure it for you)
Can you
afford to keep spare parts on-site for your server? Even something as
simple as a fan breaking can take your server out of action for days
until a replacement arrives. If you find an error in the logs, would
you know how to troubleshoot it?
You don’t need to worry
about any of that with Cloud Computing. You rent the computing power
you need from a dedicated provider. They take care of the server for
you, so no more worrying about whether Error ID#1382 is going to crash
your server.
If
you’ve tried to use VPN, it’s likely you’ll have been disappointed by
it. It’s slow, clunky, and prone to crashing your computer if you so
much as dare to open a small Word document.
This
isn’t entirely the fault of VPN as a technology; it’s more to do with
BT, and the ancient telephone lines which simply can’t carry enough
data to cope with VPN connections. Even the fastest ADSL connection can
only carry a tiny amount of data compared to your internal network, and
there’s nothing faster than ADSL on the market except for
ultra-expensive fibre-optic connections, which start at around £10,000
per year.
With
traditional server computing, sharing data between offices is a
nightmare. There are technologies that can synchronise data between
servers in different locations, but due to slow internet connections
there’s inevitably a long time lag between John saving a file to the
server in HQ, and Jane being able to open it down in the branch office.
What
if John and Jane both make changes to a file in different offices?
Whose changes win? At best you end up with confusion, at worst
corruption of your data.
You could rely on email to send
files back and forth, but that quickly degenerates as people lose track
of who has what, or work off an old version of a file on their desktop.
Cloud
Computing keeps all your data in a central location. Everyone accesses
the same website, and gets the latest version of every document. No
more waiting for that document from John to synchronise, you get it as
soon as he uploads it.
The
Cloud Provider has already developed the software, and will be
continually improving it over time. They will have incorporated feature
requests from their other clients, and will have the resources to
thoroughly test their software.
Developing software
yourself is either extremely time-consuming or extremely expensive. You
can outsource the development, but the programmers you hire probably
won’t know much about your line of work, and so making sure they build
what you want will take up a huge amount of your time.
And there will be bugs, which they’ll charge you to fix.
There’s
no need to develop your own database, spreadsheet or software package
to run your business. After all, why slog away fixing bugs in your own
code, when you can simply lease someone else’s hard work, and make it
work for you?
With
traditional, packaged software that you install on your PC, you have to
pay for upgrades: not just once, but for every PC you’ve installed the
software on.
You could decide not to upgrade, but in
many cases old versions of business software are incompatible with the
latest computers – forcing you to either pay for the latest version, or
keep a handful of ancient computers around the office to run your
important software.
Cloud Computing does away with this.
Because the software is web-based, everyone gets access to the latest
version automatically, as soon as it’s released.
Mobile
CAD Surveying Ltd and Clouds UK has an extra advantage here, as we
don’t charge you for extra users – you can have as many people as you
like using the site, all for a single fee.