You'd be forgiven for thinking that Cloud Computing is something to do with using your laptop on a plane, in fact it is likely to be the biggest change in business IT systems since the introduction of the desktop computer. The best news yet is that Cloud Computing will save your business money and provide better IT services!
What is Cloud Computing?
Most businesses will have some form of IT infrastructure onsite to provide applications (such as Sage) or services (such as email) to your employees. Running this infrastructure is very costly especially when in reality it is only a platform to serve the applications and services that are important to your business. Cloud computing is about taking away the costs and responsibilities of housing this platform and just providing you access to the things that actually matter to your business.
In physical terms this means the Cloud provider hosts the hardware and systems required to run the applications and services you require and you pay for access to the applications and services. The Cloud provider incurs the cost of purchasing, running, and maintaining the hardware and houses it in a professional datacentre.
Cloud Computing can provide access to a single application, an end user desktop, a server, and even a set of hardware resources if you have a more hands on IT team.
Why is this a good thing?
There are many benefits to Cloud Computing, including:
- As you are not housing the platform (the IT infrastructure) you have none of the running costs or maintenance.
- You do not have to invest in expensive hardware and you only pay for what you need.
- Systems are flexible and can shrink or grow with your business.
- Cloud systems are incredibly reliable and highly secure.
- Cloud systems are easy to manage and lead to lower support costs
What's the downside?
Cloud Computing is only now becoming a realistic choice for many businesses because of the increasing availability of cheap, high speed internet links. For Cloud Computing to work you must have good reliable internet links and ideally a backup link in case your mainline goes down. For smaller businesses an ADSL connection is usually fine but larger businesses might want to look at high speed wireless links or leased lines.
Summary
Cloud Computing allows business to focus on what's important to them. Most business do not care about how powerful the server is, how many gigawotsits storage they need or whether its running Windows 2008 R2 SP1 or not. Business care about their employees having reliable access to the applications and services they need, when the need it. That is what Cloud Computing is about.
Piandi Cloud Computing Services
Piandi offer a range of Cloud Computing solutions and can work with you to identify what is best for your business. If you are interested in discussing how Cloud Computing can help your business, don't hesitate to contact us.