These days, even those small business owners and executives who are well aware of Cloud Computing are asking lots of questions about it:
Should my business consider Cloud Computing?This series of White Papers addresses these questions to help you decide whether and how your business should move to Cloud Computing.
The growth of cloud computing is nothing short of astounding. The market research firm International Data Corporation projects that the market for Cloud Computing will grow at an annual rate of 21.6% from about $11 billion in 2009 to almost $30 billion by 2014.
The reasons for this phenomenal growth are many. Cloud computing is one of those classic changes that, over time, becomes part of how a company operates. For growing companies limited by finances, cloud computing brings some down-to-earth benefits. One of the most important is that Cloud Computing helps businesses cut costs by sharing resources.
As you can see here, most businesses have a high degree of variability in their use of IT resources. Yet when you manage these resources in-house, you must allow for the highest expected requirements.
If you don’t, you may fail to meet the demands of your customers and the needs of your employees. The result is that, typically, businesses use only 5% – 15% of the capacities of their servers.
But in the cloud, you don’t pay for idle capacity. So you don’t need to provide full-time resources to meet spikes in demand. This cuts costs. You’ll also be able to reduce the headache and expense of maintaining your current in-house IT infrastructure. With Cloud Computing, the majority of this maintenance will now be done at and by your Cloud service provider.
Furthermore, because you are, in effect, renting instead of buying technology, you convert capital investments to operating expenses. Capital expenditures are reduced because you no longer need to buy hardware to update obsolete servers and because there are no longer large up-front expenses in the form of hefty software licenses. Instead you pay a much smaller and more predictable monthly service fee – typically 30% – 50% less than your total cost of IT today. This allows you to spread out your costs, and eases your cash flow.
Another major benefit of Cloud Computing is scalability. When needed, you can scale your capacity up or down according to your needs without having to worry about purchasing, or disposing of, servers or storage.
In the cloud, storage, and processing power are not issues as the service providers add servers or shift load from one server to another to provide additional capacity. Thus, as your business grows, your systems will scale smoothly from a handful of people to hundreds or more.
Cloud storage is very beneficial. When your systems are hosted in the Cloud, both server data and that on your desktops and laptops will be backed up automatically and securely on a consistent and timely basis. This ensures increased reliability and saves users from the threat of losing unrecoverable data on their computers.
When you add mobile computing to the mix via Smartphones and tablets, you’ll see why on-premise applications and data have a shrinking audience. With Cloud Computing, your employees can work with your information from wherever they are and from any device. Your data and systems will be accessible to your entire staff from anywhere they have Internet access – at work, at home, or on the road.
The combination of mobility, scalability, and automated updates and backups has tremendous implications for Business Continuity. Let’s take a look at a real-life example.
In January 2011, a huge snow and ice storm paralyzed Atlanta and much of the Southeast for a week. Roads were impassable, schools were closed, and so were most businesses.
But people at companies using DynaSis’ ITility Cloud solution were able to work from home. They could access both their personal and corporate data just as if they’d been sitting at their desks. And they didn’t have to worry about their servers being down because the IT person was unable to get to work and maintain them.
In another example, in 2010 Commercial Retrofitters & Recyclers, an energy auditing and recycling company in Upper Marlboro, MD, had their store burglarized and eight desktops stolen. But, because their systems were all based in the Cloud, when the owner discovered the theft the next morning, he simply purchased eight new computers and was up and running again by noon.
Cloud Computing also uses less energy than traditional server rooms. This is important to the many companies committed to sustainability. By sharing resources in the Cloud instead of purchasing additional hardware, you can reduce the size of your carbon footprint. One less server put into service is one less server consuming electricity. The collective benefit accrued through millions of companies switching to cloud computing is immense and is considered a responsible business practice by most environmental groups.
Finally, for small businesses, competing against big companies can seem like an uphill battle. But Cloud Computing can help even the playing field:
Do you think you can’t take on the big companies in your market? Think again. One study finds that adoption rates of Cloud Computing services by smaller organizations will outpace those of large enterprises by a factor of two. That means while the big guys are scratching their heads, the smaller, smarter players can make inroads into markets where they could not go before. Why? Because, with Cloud Computing, it’s just easier to grow and integrate on a global scale. The use of cloud computing by small businesses like yours will enhance your agility and your ability to compete with much bigger companies.
Of course no experienced business person is going to make a change like adopting Cloud Computing without asking some key questions:
In our White Paper titled, “Should I be Concerned about Cloud Computing?” we’ll address these and related issues in detail. The good news is this. With your systems and data running in the Cloud, your applications will actually run faster, your systems will be more reliable, and your data will be far more secure than they are today in your current environment.
Finally, you’ll want to know how you can gain the benefits of Cloud Computing for your business. Our White Paper titled, “The ITility Cloud Solution for Small Businesses” describes how DynaSis can provide you with exactly the Cloud Computing services your business needs while smoothly managing your transition to the Cloud making it as easy, as inexpensive, and as painless as possible.
DynaSis (www.DynaSis.com) has asked Business Technology Futurist Jack Shaw (www.e-com.com) to write this series of White Papers discussing Cloud Computing and its implications for small businesses. For the past 30 years he has worked with leading edge technologies – from PC’s to the Internet. For many years now, he has been working with, studying, and analyzing the business impact of the technologies we now know as Cloud Computing.
This White Paper discusses the benefits of Cloud Computing. Others in this series explain what Cloud Computing is, address concerns you may have about Cloud Computing, and describe the ITility Cloud Solution which DynaSis offers to help your business gain the full advantages of Cloud Computing. This series of White Papers is also available in video format at www.DynaSis.com/videos.
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