Adopting cloud solutions benefit businesses

The topic of cloud computing comes up in nearly every strategic IT conversation that we have. Customers and prospective customers want to know the advantages, benefits and pitfalls of moving to cloud services.

Moving your IT systems and services to "the cloud" means a shift from traditional office-based solutions to computing services that are delivered from remote datacenters. These services might include hardware, software, storage and other pieces of the IT infrastructure.

When these services are moved to the cloud, the business costs for IT shift from a capital expenditure to an operating expense, and pricing is based upon demand, similar to pricing based on consumption from a traditional utility company.

The potential benefits of a cloud computing model include cost savings, increased IT capabilities and improved reliability. Recent statistics from a study released by Microsoft show

63 percent of small to midsize businesses are using cloud services. The innovation shows businesses expect the adoption rate of cloud services to continue, especially in the areas of data storage and backup, collaboration and business-class email.

Lot of questions

There are a lot of questions and concerns businesses need to consider when building a strategy for adoption of cloud services. Some of the key points we discuss with customers are centered on security, availability and disaster recovery.

• Security: There are three types of security to consider: physical, data protection and network threats. Cloud-service providers have physically secure datacenters with multiple levels of access control and 24/7 monitoring. They as well have data protection and threat detection systems and staff that are too costly for small businesses to build, run and manage in-house

• Availability: Most businesses don't calculate the cost of IT system downtime. Lost worker productivity is one part of the equation, however there as well are support costs and the potential for business disruption and lost sales. Cloud-service providers specialize in building highly available and redundant infrastructure. During you might be able to build similar solutions into your office environment, they are expensive to purchase, install and maintain.

• Data protection and business continuity: Having your software, data and backup solutions in the cloud gives you a fast and economical way to implement a robust disaster recovery plan. Using cloud-based solutions mitigates risk of data loss or business interruption from theft, fire or natural disasters.

Recent study

A recent study by Aberdeen Group shows the average downtime for businesses using cloud-based services was four times less than non-cloud users and cloud users suffered fewer outage events per year.

A move to cloud can be a competitive advantage. By leveraging this utility-based approach to IT, your business can improve IT security, speed adoption of new services and build a more-resilient infrastructure for your critical IT resources.

The topic of cloud computing comes up in nearly every strategic IT conversation that we have. Customers and prospective customers want to know the advantages, benefits and pitfalls of moving to cloud