Cloud computing for small and medium businesses

Many small and medium companies think about moving their data and applications to the cloud as a way of reducing immediate costs. For example, they may have outgrown their office space and decide to move to the cloud rather than renting a larger location. Or they need to replace their old servers, and think it may be cheaper to rent servers from a cloud hosting provider. Or their IT manager has resigned, and they think they may save on salary by moving to the cloud.

It’s true that the cloud makes life easier, especially for SMBs. They don’t need to think about software or hardware updates, and they don’t have to worry about data security. But they shouldn’t panic if the cloud is a little more expensive in the short term, as the managed services or cloud hosting company may charge one-time scoping, set-up or migration fees.

And yet, SMBs usually obtain financial benefits when they move to the cloud, especially over the long term. These companies can get powerful functionality for a low price, or even for free. For example, they won’t have to worry about rolling out updates. More importantly, they gain mobility. This is essential in industries like supply chain management or food and beverage, where there are usually employees in the field. With cloud computing, these workers can access their data from any remote device. As telecommunications companies roll out faster networks, the speed of these workers increases and is as good as if they were back in the office.

Cloud technology grows and gets better all the time. SMBs will benefit from moving to the cloud, as long as they work with a managed services company that helps them implement fast and smoothly.