All businesses, start-up, small, medium and large rely heavily on technology for day to day activities. Expectations around the technology are that it must be available 99.9% of the time and work. If it doesn't work, money is lost through staff not being productive through not having access to key information or the ability to reach out to clients.
Building and managing a technology infrastructure is costly. Capital must be used to purchase servers. And support contracts put in place for maintaining and keeping the server lights on.
The traditional approach to IT where a server has been placed in the main office along with a telephone PBX has been a solution which has worked well for a number of years.
Changes in staff working locations be it from home or when travelling and expansion to new office locations is challenging the traditional IT approach.
Additionally, maintaining a server is costly and upgrades are time consuming and expensive. Furthermore, when the server in the office is unavailable through loss of power, hardware failure or virus infections, the whole company is without the ability to access information and communicate with clients.
Cloud computing or hosted services are offering a compelling alternative to traditional IT solutions of installing and maintaining servers and / or a PBX.
Your current setup, working locations, numbers of staff and quality of connectivity will influence how much difference cloud computer or hosted services can help provide resilience for your technology and additionally help empower staff by enabling the right information at the right time wherever they are.
There are a great number of services available. Sound advice would be to ask an IT Support company who has a good knowledge to help understand how your business operates and suggest practical ways that cloud computing and hosted service can help empower your business and staff.
Below is a selection of services that are on offer:
• Remote desktops
• Remote servers
• Email
• File storage
• Telephone systems (VoIP)
• Application e.g. SAGE
A company with good knowledge of traditional IT support and cloud computing and hosted services will be able to quickly help you choose which cloud computing / hosted services are right for your business.
The process of implementing cloud computing and hosted services is usually very straightforward and will not impact your business in any way. Using a company with a good knowledge of cloud computing and hosted services will help you make a very smooth transition.
