Cloud Schmoud

Buzz word, fad, flash in the pan....

All ways in which people have described cloud and with seemingly every IT Marketing budget's pound/dollar/yen poured in to it and every blog online talking about the cloud it come become a little tiresome. Especially the fact that it there are different meanings, interpretations and opinions about "Cloud". If I see another website or company branding that has lazily used a picture of a cloud I will jump from one Felix Baumgartner style!

Forget all the marketing speak for a minute and let's talk about what it can actually do for your business if anything?!

Here is a case study of a customer of ours who was equally sceptical to "Cloud" and not willing to fall for all the marketing jargon and pretty background pictures.

Quite often an easy first step in to Cloud is your emails and in this case it was Microsoft Exchange. Moving this from an in-house server to a Cloud Hosted Email service largely meant this was one less thing for Steven to look after in his office, one less thing that could break. The more you looked in to it though the more benefits you saw....

- Very easy to manage, with an API where adding/deleting users is as simple as a couple of clicks
- Flexible pay as you go pricing meaning that when you do remove add a user you are only paying for that
- Options to archive were particularly useful for Stephen to fit in with FSA compliance
- No need to pay out on hardware, just a simple monthly cost
- Simple migration


So when Stephen looked at this he was happy and the old cynic asked me what to do next.


Another simple one that follows on is a File Sharing/Collaboration product. How often do you get emails with attachments and no matter how good you are at storing your emails you can't find the latest version of a file? Either this or you have to plough through hoards of documents in your shared drive with slightly different names after each amendment?

The File Sharing/Collaboration products are great for this. You share a drive in the cloud and if there are amendments in the cloud you can choose to be notified. This was great for Stephen as it meant he knew his sales guys had the most up to date price list wherever they were accessing the cloud from their tablets and smartphones. The product we spoke about had a 30 day free trial so it was a case of giving it a bash.This was enough of a reason for Stephen to implement this straight away but he was also benefittng from:-

- Increased redunancy at state of the art Datacenters. His important files were as safe as they could be.
- The ability to share up to date files with customers with his own branding.
- An audit trail of all files and changes made.


Now before he knew it Stephen had his emails in the cloud and now a lot of his documents.....


Stephen was now looking for more "Quick wins" as he called them.


Next up he called me saying that his anti-virus was up for renewal....


Simple. "Let's stick it in the cloud". Similar benefits from before as Stephen only had to pay for what he used and the beauty of such simple deployment made it a no-brainer to move forward with an Anti-Virus and Content Filtering solution.


Lastly Stephen's old hardware was getting a bit old. He was using Windows XP and knew that was going to be end of support before long. For this option we spoke about putting his Desktop in the Cloud. This way he doesn't have to buy a load more machines and OS licenses up-front, he can pay as he goes and have predicable costing utilising first class technology and the security of a top Datacenter. As well as this he can host his applications in the cloud too!

Nothing had changed for Stephen's staff, they were still seeing the same desktop they log in to every morning with their children as desktop backgrounds. Also his mobile staff could login to their desktops via their tablets and smartphones and work from anywhere. I mentioned how this could be good for him should Britain shut down like it normally does with a sprinkling of snow!


Now the common theme with all of these is simplicity. It was quick to implement, simple to bill and a pretty simple decision. It has taken a lot of work away from Stephen managing his IT estate and allows him to get on with more strategic tasks in running his business.

Of course there is a lot more that Stephen can move to The Cloud including his Servers, Databases and even his telephone system but we just wanted to talk about the quick wins where by using 30 day free trials in most of these solutions it made decisions both simple and limited any risk.


It often is that first step in the unknown that can be the hardest but with a bit of education, a helping hand the leap can be worthwhile and open up a wealth of opportunity for your business.

Please comment/follow/share if you liked my post!

@CITC50

Small and Medium Business : Supporting your Business

Supporting YOUR Business

Every small and medium business these days relies on technology. Whether it is your local farmer (who is now in the cloud!) Farmer in the Cloud to a Boutique Investment Bank in The City who cannot afford to be disconnected for a single millisecond for the major loss of revenue.

Now it's all well and good having I.T. setup and installed but it is a sin to not be on top of the evolving nature in the technology industry. Add to that the chance of something going wrong and staff becoming frustrated that they cannot do their job. This rather obviously can lead to a loss of morale, loss of productivity, customer dissatisfaction and worst of all a loss of revenue.

Most small business owners have toyed around with various options.....

Some businesses will not have any I.T. support. They have gone out and bought some kit and are happy with everything, they might buy some new kit when it breaks and carry on like that. Perhaps they took advice from a friend of the family who is good on the Xbox and wears glasses.

Hire an IT guy/team. On the face of it this seems perfect, your own dedicated resource for anything technical and ask them anything you want. They will know your infrastructure well and should be on top of most of the latest I.T developments. Problem is these can range from a junior support guy at 30k per year to a more Senior "Systems Administrator" for 50k+. This quite often isn't an option for most SMB's that's without thinking about recruitment costs, holidays, On-going training costs, days they are off sick and interest levels.

The beauty of outsourcing this to a smaller Managed Services provider is you will still retain that personal touch and they can be flexible enough to offer you a bespoke package to match your requirements. Whether you envisage needing remote support or needing someone at your office to help you. The smaller company with that personal touch are best positioned to understand your business and will be best placed to advise and consult on new/existing technologies that could really benefit your business.

Most people have heard all the Buzz words... "The Cloud", "Virtualisation", "Mobility", "Integration", "Software as a Service" but who should you take advice from and what should you use? There are likely to be applications and solutions out there that would help your business and potentially improve it.

An IT Support and Services can help here. They have no interest in forcing products down your throats, there is no point. After all it is going to be them with you for the long-haul so they don't want to be fixing issues or dealing with your wrath! They will be grateful for your custom and will often go above and beyond for that customer. In some cases referring business towards you with other contacts due to long relationships being built.

So why not stick 15-30 minutes aside of an afternoon in your diary to find out what options you have? 
(It costs nothing to have a chat and it's nice!) They may be able to help you, educate you and give you some peace of mind all the while letting you get on with what you are good at, concentrating on that business you setup!