Does Cloud Computing Make Sense For Your Business - Part 3

Does it make sense for my business?

Cloud computing and whether it makes sense really depends on your business and the applications that are critical to the operations of your business. If you are just starting out and setting up a business – check out the cloud and what it can offer. You can get the entire Microsoft Office suite of products from the cloud and rather than pay an upfront license fee to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint, you can “rent” the programs from the cloud for a monthly fee per user. You can do the same with email. If you need an accounting package, there are a number of them available from the cloud. Here is where the next step gets tricky – if you have very specific applications running your business – they may not be cloud ready. Certainly within the manufacturing and engineering arena, the applications required must be installed locally on server systems at the location. They are simply not cloud ready.

The opposition to Cloud computing remains relatively the same as it was in Cloud’s infancy; security, reliability and support, privacy but more importantly, the actual productivity generated by using a cloud system, are all concerns. Security issues and reliability are somewhat negated by the customers’ ability to change providers if they are not satisfied with the service provided, thereby forcing the providers to maintain a high level of risk-prevention, which they have. However, Cloud computing service providers must provide solutions and responses to all of the aforementioned factors in order to succeed and to satisfy the needs of the growing population of SMBs. While, in general, the existing service providers are effectively providing solutions for all of these concerns, time will tell if they will be able to keep up with the many and various demands of SMBs.

The recent outage with Blackberry created some understandable concerns with many SMBs thinking the same thing can happen to their data on their provider’s servers. Obviously, losing access to that amount of data would be devastating to any business. This is indeed a risk factor associated with any new technology and “way of the future,” but it should be noted that all solutions, no matter how well thought out, no matter how expensive, can fail.

Finally, another drawback to Cloud computing is that it relies on a strong connection to the internet. If an SMB has a slow connection, which is often the case for SMBs who need to be careful where they are spending money, connection time to the Cloud servers might be longer than expected, causing a very real limit to productivity.

Continue Reading:

Cloud Computing - Part 1

What is the Benefit of Cloud Computing? - Part 2

Is Cloud Computing Working for Small-to-Medium-Sized Businesses? - Part 4