“The Cloud” has become the latest buzzword and its definition is somewhat nebulous. The cloud can be boiled down to this: when you use the cloud you’re paying someone else a monthly fee to provide you a computing service or resource. This can have some significant advantages in reducing the initial outlay of capital to set up your own environment and in reducing the technical complexity that you need to manage.
When you’re looking at using the cloud to meet some of your business needs there are a number of factors to consider including:
Security Who has access to your data and under what conditions?
Backups Are you confident in the providers ability to provide restore services or do you need to add your own backups?
Routine Cost Are you paying a flat monthly fee or is cost associated with usage and how do you plan on monitoring usage?
Implementation Cost How much effort is it going to be to get stuff into the cloud?
Business Processes How are your business processes going to be impacted, do you need to make staffing changes etc?
Sanity Have you done a Cost benefit analysis to verify that this will benefit the company?
Some common examples of cloud services include:
- Hosted E-Mail
- Cloud Storage
- Virtual Private Servers
- Web Hosting
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
Hosted E-mail
E-Mail is one of the services most frequently hosted in the cloud. G-Mail is e-mail in the cloud. Microsoft’s hosted exchange through Office 365 is another. This is one of the services that make a great deal of sense to have in the cloud. Usually when you’re getting an e-mail service, you’re getting anti-spam and anti-virus filtering on incoming e-mail, the ability to have your own domain name, and automatic backups which are handled by the provider for you.
Cloud Storage
Cloud Storage can be loosely split into two different categories: File storage and Block Storage. Services such as Dropbox offer file storage. Your files are usually available o you either via a web browser, or through the providers app. Dropbox (and Microsoft One Drive, and Google Drive) let you keep cached copies of some or all of your files locally on your computer, so you have access to the files even if you have no internet connection (and faster access even when you do have a connection). Amazon Glacier is an example of a storage service where files are not immediately available. Azure Blobs, Amazon S3 and Wasabi are examples of block storage and can be very handy for off-site backup targets.
Virtual Private Servers
With Virtual Private Servers you get access to a virtual server in the cloud. This is just like the physical server except it’s not on your premises. You still need to load (and license) an operating system on it, and take care of the configuration and software maintenance yourself. One upside is that you can get a server started up very quickly (no waiting on your favorite vendor to take two weeks to get a physical server shipped out). One thing to be careful of here is cost. Some providers will give you a server instance for a flat monthly fee, others will charge by usage and if you’re not paying attention to the usage, it can add up pretty quickly. Examples of providers include Amazon Web Services (EC2 instances), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Digital Ocean, MediaTemple.
Web Hosting
There are a large number of providers that provide web hosting. Companies like GoDaddy offer simple pre-built templated sites for very little cost. Many web development companies will use either Virtual Private Servers, or re-sell services from other providers such as Host Gator.
Software as a Service
SaaS is an interesting space with a number of companies offering their software in a hosted environment. A number of companies are pulling back on development of their customer installed software and are pushing their hosted solutions instead. This is an area where Small Businesses can really take advantage of the software without significant upfront costs. Some providers offer a basic version of their software for free (or almost free) with the goal of getting you to a premium paying customer. Services such as Zoho Invoices are great for individual contractors while their Zoho Books offering is geared to slightly larger companies than the sole proprietor.