What to Know Before You Make the Switch

Author: Keith Huggett

Cloud computing is a major force in today's IT world for both big and small businesses. In fact, outsourcing software licensing, hardware purchasing, system administration and both data and physical security to a third party is particularly valuable for businesses that lack the scale to amortize all of these costs. Of course, small businesses without an IT staff may not have the support they need to strategically transition to the cloud. Luckily, it is not that complicated.

The first step is to figure out what you can move. Many business applications are available in a cloud computing setting -- ranging from mundane items like email and office suites to advanced tools such as customer relationship management software and accounting packages. Other cloud providers offer space and computing power to run your applications. You can also move much of your data storage to the cloud. This has the added benefit of making it easier for your teams to collaborate. On the other hand, highly sensitive and proprietary information should probably stay in your office, especially if you have the staff and infrastructure to keep it more secure

Once you have decided what to move, decide where to move it. You can move raw data to cloud services that include their own interfaces for you to access, like Google Mail, Dropbox or Salesforce.com. Alternately, you can move your applications to public cloud providers that give you a platform to run your own programs. Finally, you can set up a private cloud which has all of the benefits of public cloud computing but with an additional layer of security and privacy. 

Before flipping the switch to turn on your cloud computing setup, make sure that your company and your employees have the bandwidth they need to connect  to your applications. The cloud lets you do without a lot of things, but you do need  to have reliable Internet connections to get to your data.

If you need help understanding how to make cloud computing work for your business, contact The Tax Office Inc. Our experts can help you harness this exciting technology.