What is Cloud Computing

What is Cloud Computing? SUPERGEEKS.NET

I am often asked how cloud computing canimprove a company’s operations. Mostbusiness owners have heard all thebuzzwords and they sense they need to dosomething sooner rather than later. Theyare just unclear about what they should doand how they should implement it.Interestingly, the migration to cloud basedsolutions is being driven more by CEOsand CFOs than by organizations’traditional IT departments. This meansthere’s a bit of a learning curve for theexecs, but it also means the decision cycleis focused more on ROI, return oninvestment. What will it cost? And whatwill I get?

We moved SuperGeeks to purely cloudbased solutions over the last two years. It’sbeen a relatively straightforward processthat has brought us so many advantages. Infact, I can’t imagine ever going back to theway we used to do things.Like most companies, we had a server. Ourfiles sat on that server everything fromemail to Word docs to accounting software.If the server was up and running, thecompany was up and running. And everythree years or so we would spend fivethousand dollars to replace the server andupgrade the software. The server was thehub of our day to day operations and as aresult all of our activity was conducted inclose proximity of it.

As internet connectivity become cheaper and more reliable, many of thethings that we assumed needed to be handled by the server could now bedone through a browser. The first to go was the accounting. We simplymoved it to an online version of the software. This meant thebookkeeper no longer had to come to the office to reconcile the books. Italso meant our field techs could create invoices and collect paymentonsite. The immediate benefits were stronger cash flow and moreaccurate financial reporting.The phone system was the next thing to get nuked. We had one of thosecrazy expensive centrix systems that came with a contract. In otherwords, we had to pay $700 per month for a technology that really didn’tadapt well to our changing needs. And we were locked into a multi yearcontract! By moving the telecommunications to a webbased system, wecould scale quickly and inexpensively, plus we could leverage neatfeatures like routing calls on the fly and automatically convertingvoicemail messages to emails.

The final phase in our transition to cloud computingentailed moving all our productivity functions to GoogleApps for Business. We were using webbased email andGoogle Docs for several years, but we weren’t taking fulladvantage of a complete, webbased solution. In their neverending battle with Microsoft, Google created a suite ofsoftware that works exactly like Microsoft Office exceptGoogle’s solution was web based, while Microsoft’straditional solution sat on a hard drive, i.e. your company’sserver.By creating a comprehensive set of productivity tools likeword processing, spreadsheets, presentations andcalendaring, Google was able to say, “Hey, you don’t need tospend all that money on Microsoft servers and software.Just do everything you normally do online with GoogleApps for Business. It’s faster, better, cheaper.”

And it is infinitely better. Let me share with you how it’schanged the way we work. First, all docs are now storedonline. We don’t have to worry about backups and disasterrecovery. And because everything is shared online with theright team member, each of us has access the most recentversion of the file. No more hunting for the correct versionon someone’s hard drive. The online version is the rightone.Google’s solution also takes care of our calendaring andemail. Because Google’s spam filter is one of the best in theworld, we now receive less spam than before. And becauseit’s so easy to add and remove users, we can setup newhires in minutes. Likewise, we can turn off someone’saccess to email, docs, etc with just a click of the button. Theease of scaling up and down like that boosts operationalefficiency while safeguarding our company’s data.

Perhaps the most powerful feature of cloud basedsolutions is the ability to transform your business intoa truly mobile operation. By untethering your companyfrom the server, you can now decentralize your office.The right people can now get immediate access to theright information regardless of where they are, the timeof day, and the device they are using. Need to checkyour calendar from your smart phone? No problem.Want to update a file after the kids go to bed? DoneNow, if we could only get internet access on those longtrans Pacific flights…then we could do everything fromthe sky.

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