Cloud Services - A Leap in Technology or Simply Outsourcing?

Cloud Services – is it the next step in technology or is it just outsourcing your IT needs?

What a great question!  I hear it a lot from both my prospects and customers.  In years past, companies have begun to allow 3^rd party companies host their data servers in remote locations, on the premise it provides better disaster recovery and better security than housing on-site.  Does it really?  Let’s discuss…

While the practice of keeping your equipment in a remote location (commonly referred to as “Co-Location services) has been around for some time, the actual benefit is up in the air.  Yes, co-location does provide some added piece of mind.  Typically “Co-Lo” facilities come with emergency power supplies, diesel generators, battery backup, 24 hour security, etc.  Sounds good, and you can probably save some cap-ex costs by not having to build the power grid yourself.  Throw in the added value of saving the real estate costs of housing it yourself and co-location seems like a reasonable way to go.

Cloud Computing comes with many advantages

With cloud services, you get all the benefits of co-location, plus a lot more.  No longer are you using your own servers, paying your own maintenance fees, or paying the salary of the IT guy to visit the co-lo site every time you need to change some hardware.  Using cloud services gives your company the benefit of state of the art, enterprise grade equipment with 24x7x365 on-site monitoring.  With the right provider, your data is automatically backed up at multiple data centers across the country, providing true disaster recovery protection.  If you live in Boston, your data could be backed up in California.  It would take quite a disaster to reach across the United States!   

If you need to add hardware, you visit the web portal to the server on your local PC, make a couple entries on a web page and Voila!  You have additional server space within a few minutes.  No longer are you dependent on waiting for a new server to be built and shipped from your vendor.  I’ve seen this take process up to 4 weeks.

After we discuss these facts, the conversations with my clients usually then quickly turn to “But my IT staff has been with me for years. I don't want to eliminate their jobs.  They have families to support. ”  

Sure they do.  We all do.   Cloud services doesn’t need to reduce headcount.  The use of cloud services simply changes  the focus for your IT staff,  allowing them to concentrate on issues critical to growing your business, rather than maintaining it.  By removing the daily chore of monitoring the platform and network, they now have the time needed to create the new software program your marketing group has requested; they can finish the bandwidth reports your CFO has been waiting for to evaluate network costs.  There are loads of projects they can do.  Take a quick look at the IT task schedule at your next staff meeting.  There’s plenty to do…….

The age-old saying “Time is Money” comes back into play and creates more revenues for your company because the use of cloud services will add time back into your IT staff’s day.  It may even save you some money too!

If you’re interested in more detailed information on the benefits of cloud services for your business, please reach out to me via email dave@davehanron.com or via Twitter @DaveHanron.  I can also tell you how you can get a free 30 day no-risk trial in the “Cloud”.

If anyone has some other benefits of “cloud services” I’d enjoying hearing about your personal experiences……