The Cloud vs. Internal Servers for Small Businesses
Recently, I read a blog about customer relationship management (CRM), and it brought out a lot of great points about how cloud computing makes a lot of sense for small businesses.
Cost Savings, Minimizing Expenditures
First, start-ups see the technology as an end-to-end solution that presents multiple cost savings opportunities. For example, start-ups may not be sure of when their business volume will go up or down, but the cloud allows them the opportunity to pay only for the server capacity that they need. So, they can scale up or down as necessary.
Another cloud benefit for smaller firms is that they don’t need to put out a huge amount of capital to support servers – for example, housing, cooling and maintaining them. Instead, they can focus more on selling their products.
Training/Education
Cloud-based applications are customizable and extremely user-friendly, and companies don’t have to waste a lot of time training employees to use the system and subsequent upgrades. The cloud also gives companies a chance to let their IT folks do more strategic work – like planning for the future growth of computing needs – rather than running around resolving technical problems and putting out fires. Lastly, smaller companies can give wider access to cloud applications to employees because they can use the cloud via their Blackberrys, iPad, iPhone or other device with access to the web. They don’t even need a PC.
Computing Costs
The Cloud holds advantages where the pocketbook is concerned, too. While costs for a dedicated server varies, depending on the apps hosted, a small business that needs to use a server for 700 to 800 hours a month could pay about $24.95 per month for shared hosting and between $90 and $140 for cloud computing, says the article. On the other hand, a dedicated server can cost $55 to $100 each month.
OK; so you may be asking, isn’t a dedicated server cheaper? Not really, because cloud computing usually comes with maintenance, free upgrades, and data encryption for security purposes. You’ll find cloud computing vendors that only charge pennies per hour in operating costs, while some will even offer free cloud computing services for limited daily use. For example, companies like Monitis, offer free monitoring tools, such as the ability to instantly check websites to see if they’re up or down.
Best of all, firms that prepay for cloud services often get the best prices. According to the article, experts estimate that a cloud computing data center is capable of operating 100 servers for just about $38,000 per year, only $5 per hour. And you can get even better rates when you contract with cloud vendors because they can predict profits for the year.
Tracking SLAs
While contracting with cloud vendors may get you better pricing, it’s not a guarantee of good service. That’s why it’s important to constantly track and monitor service level agreements (SLAs), and a good independent monitoring company can give you accurate numbers on such things as cloud performance metrics. Plus, monitoring services, such as Monitis, offer companies proactive notification if a server fails on your cloud platform.
Cloud computing makes good economic and business sense for small companies, and backing up those services with independent monitoring makes even more sense.
