Many business owners read and hear much about “the cloud,” and wonder if they are missing the boat if they are not fully in the cloud, yesterday. The answer is not simple. Unsurprisingly, the cloud is not a panacea.
Some business processes are a great fit for cloud-based service providers. Spam filtering, for one, is a great candidate to be in the cloud. Certain other specialty services are often a good fit. But for your day-to-day operations, one must be careful. Remember that cloud services have two fundamental bases: 1) they are accessed through your Internet connection, and 2) they are hosted on a server (or servers) not controlled by you.
If your key business data is only available in the cloud, that means that if you have a problem with your Internet connection, you are not able to run your business as long as that service is not functional. Also, your data is controlled by a third party. Should that provider cease operations, recovering your data could be difficult or impossible, which could have a tremendous negative impact on your business.
By comparison, if you have your data on your own server(s), and you have a problem with your IT provider, your servers keep running, and your business keeps operating, while you solve that problem.
We believe the right balance between locally-hosted, and cloud-hosted, services varies from business to business. The best way to determine that balance is to schedule an assessment so we can discuss what services are essential to your business.